Endless Summer
by angelcutepie
Summary: Sequel to The Ketchum Boys. Every relationship has a bump in the road. This bump in Ash and Dawn's relationship is Dawn's Dad. What happens when Ash keeps Dawn out past her curfew and her dad overreacts? Dawn is determined to prove to her dad that Ash is a good boyfriend by using more of her "brilliant" plans. Will she and Ash be able to continue dating in this mess?
1. Dawn: Secret Make Out Hideout

**Author's Notes: Hi guys~! :) At last the sequel is here ^_^ I'm really excited about this story! Hope you guys enjoy this story as much as you did the last one. This chapter is quite short :p but it's very important for the whole story basically xD So yeah...**

**Well, not much to say here so I won't hold you readers any longer.**

**Read and enjoy please :DD **

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Dawn: Secret Make-Out Hideout

Ash boosted me from the concrete embankment onto the narrow ledge that ran all the way down the highway bridge. From here, I'd have the perfect platform to spray our names on the six-foot wall separating us from cars - that is, if nothing went wrong.

I could have painted _DAWN LOVES ASH _right where I was, above the embankment. At least, technically I was still on dry land, or over it. But his brothers would call us lightweights. They'd been more daring when they painted their own names. Using each seam in the metal wall as a handgrip, I walked carefully along the ledge. The embankment fell away. I was over the lake.

A quarter of the way across, which seemed respectable enough, I stopped. Shaking the can of spray paint with one hand and hanging on the bridge for dear life with the other, I turned to look behind me. My house, Ash's house, and Ash's parents' marina lay across the water from us, but I couldn't see them in the starlight. Only a few lights edging the marina dock shone in the summer light, their reflections ripping in the water. Everyone must have been pooped from the festival on the lake that day. Not a single boat motor broke the silence - only the occasional _clack-clack, clack-clack_ of a car passing on the other side of the concrete wall and a nervous vibration through the bridge.

_"Kkkkkk,"_ came radio static. "You on the bridge. Dawn Berlitz. This is the police."

I glared at Ash standing on the ledge beside me with his hands cupped over his mouth to sound more like a police radio. He wasn't holding onto the bridge at _all._

"You startled me," I said. "What if I'd fallen?" The lake wasn't far enough below to kill me, but the impact might still hurt. And we were not here for his adrenaline rush. We were doing something romantic, and we were in it together.

He touched my elbow. "I would have caught you."

He probably would have. What he lacked in good judgment, he made up for in strength and coordination. The poor judgment often trumped the strength and coordination, which accounted for at least one of the times in grade school he'd broken his leg.

But his fingers on my elbow made my skin tingle. His pokeball pendant glinted in the starlight, and his strange brown eyes watched me in the hot darkness. Though, I was precariously balanced and about to deface public property, I used my own poor judgment to lean forward and kiss him.

He seemed surprised for a split second. Usually, he was the one to start things between us. He slid his hands into my hair and kissed me back.

I felt the paint can slipping through my fingers. Gripping it harder, I loosened my hold on the bridge. I was falling.

He pulled me closer and held me steady. "Even _I_ think this is not the best place to make out," he breathed.

"If you say so." I was kidding. Personally, my bravado had pitched off the side of the bridge along with my balance.

_"I_ could have fallen instead of you," he said in mock outrage. "Oh, wait, I already fell." He touched the tip of my nose with his finger. "For you."

"Awww!" I cried. "Ash, that's so sweet!"

He grinned. "Did you like that? I thought of it about an hour ago, when we were in your basement looking for spray paint. I've been saving it."

"I did like it. You are a very good boyfriend. Who would have guessed?" With a final moony gaze at him - God, we were such idiots, but it was fun to be an idiot in love - I turned back to the bridge and scanned the surface for a clean place to write our names.

Over the years it had gotten crowded with graffiti. Just above me was _AUH LOVES DAON, _which Ash had been painted very sloppily last weekend, then crossed out when we had a fight. I could have moved farther down the bridge or reached higher up for a blank slate, but I was not as fond of playing Tarzan as Ash was. Finally, I decided on a space down low that had been painted over so many times, it would make a nice dark backdrop for my red paint. I shook the can one more time, held it out to Ash to pry the top off, and crouched to write.

"You're sure you don't want me to do it?" he asked.

"No thanks. When you want your name written legibly in graffiti, you have to do it yourself."

He laughed. "I was in a hurry, and the paint ran when it rained. Besides, you knew what I meant."

Smiling, I started the first downward leg of _DAWN LOVES ASH._ "Yeah, I knew what you meant."

In only a few minutes I was finishing the _H._ "There. Some couples swap class rings to show they're together. Some people switch their online profiles from _single _to _in a relationship._ We commit a misdemeanor."

He took the paint can from me. "The police chief's son's name is up here, so I wouldn't be worried. Come on." He headed to the shore, placing one shoe in front of the other, but still barely holding on to the bridge, his fingers brushing the metal. Just following him seemed dangerous.

We reached land and hiked up the embankment, over to the city boat ramp, then into the parking lot. The streetlights gently lit the trucks and empty trailers of the night fisherman. No one stopped us as we walked up the steep asphalt to Ash's truck. We'd gotten away with it.

My fingers were raw from my death grip on the bridge, and my bare toes were rough. Other than that, everything had gone perfectly my whole sixteenth birthday. After our huge fight last night, Ash and I had gotten back together today. We'd had a great time at the lake festival. We and our brothers had performed a wakeboarding show for an enormous crowd. Not even Ash had broken a bone. And now we'd spray painted our love for each other on the bridge without a single mishap? This night was Too Good To Be True.

As he opened the passenger door for me - he never locked the doors, because he liked to tempt fate - I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the window. Even after my test run in a life of crime, my hair was gorgeous, I tell you. It clumped a little in the humidity, but it looked like I'd created that piecey effect on purpose with styling gel. I was a vision on blue loveliness.

That was the last straw. A day this happy and good hair, too? Now I_ knew_ something awful was about to happen.

Adrenaline had propelled me through my artistry on the bridge. That started to drain away now. Fatigue set in - from wakeboarding in the festival show that afternoon and worrying the last few days about whether Ash and I would ever get together.

"What's wrong?" he asked from behind me, tossing the paint can.

"I'm having a good hair day."

"I hate it when that happens." Gathering my hair and pushing it forward over my shoulder, he kissed the back of my neck.

I shivered in the heat. The adrenaline came rushing back, and I was not so tired anymore.

"The night is young," he growled between kisses. "I have an idea of what we can do now. We've kissed before." Kiss. "We've made out." Kiss. "But, we've never made out as an official couple, in the privacy of my Secret Make-Out Hideout."

I turned to look sideways at him. I found I couldn't do this without denying him access to the back of my neck. So I gave up on the sly look and enjoyed his soft lips on my skin. "You have a Secret Make-Out Hideout?" I whispered with my head bent.

"I do." His low voice against my neck sent chills through me. "Just for you."

"What are we waiting for?" I hopped forward through the open door, into the truck.

"You won't regret it," he said before he closed the door and rounded the truck and we laughed together again. Decision made. It wasn't my first bad judgment leading to an Ash-related Catastrophe, and it wouldn't be my last.

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**Author's Notes: So that's the end of the first chapter ^_^ I hope you all enjoyed. Not much, but important ;) **

**Well, I'll see you guys in a few days with the next chapter :) Please review with your thoughts ^_^**

**- Angel :)**


	2. Ash: Consequences

**Author's Notes: _o/ Hi everybody :D In case you're wondering what _o/ is, it's supposed to be a person waving xD See it? Lol anyways, that's not important :p Thank you guys for the reviews last chapter! ^_^ Glad you all are excited for this :D Makes me want to write and update quicker :D**

**Well, I'm sure you're ready to read, so you may :D and enjoy~ ;)**

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Ash: Consequences

"Ash," Dawn whispered. I'd known her all my life. I was used to her scent of warm skin and warm. But in the last couple of weeks she'd started wearing perfume. I caught another whiff of it every time she shook my shoulder.

Without opening my eyes, I sniffed deeply, inhaling all the perfume I could get. Her hair tickled my face. I nuzzled her neck.

"Ash Ketchum." Now her voice sounded pinched, like she was clenching her teeth. "I am trying to remain calm so as not to alarm you, but wake the hell up already."

That made me open my eyes. She lay on top of me, looking down at me. I couldn't see her features clearly in the shadowy cab of my truck. Her long blue hair cascaded around me and glowed in the light of sunrise.

Sunrise!

"Oh, shit." I sat up, dumping her off my chest and onto the passenger side. For the perfect end to a perfect day, I'd driven her here. My secret make-out hideout was a point of land jutting into the lake with a dirt road leading to it, a primo lot that nobody had built a house on yet. It was at the other end of our neighborhood, and we could actually see our houses and my parents' marina from here. My truck was hidden from their view by the trees around us, which was the beauty of it. I loved having the upper hand for once in my life.

But that was last night. Now, the sun peeked over the highway bridge in the distance and reflected in the smooth lake.

"What time is it?" I looked toward the clock in the dashboard of my truck, which hadn't worked since probably 1995.

"I don't know," she said. "My cell phone went in the lake with me a couple of nights ago. I'd say five thirty or six."

I pulled my own cell phone from my pocket. "It's five fifty-three, and my mother's called me eleven times."

"Why didn't it ring?" Dawn wailed.

"My brothers kept texting me about hooking up with you, so I turned the sound off." Which was shooting myself in the foot. My brothers were good at making me do that. I turned the key in the ignition and threw the truck into reverse. We backed through the cloud of our own dust, which billowed through the open windows and glinted in the sunlight. As soon as I hit a clearing with more room, I jerked the truck around in a hasty three-point turn and hit the gas.

"Stupid," I muttered. I would get in trouble for staying out late. She would get in more trouble because she was a girl, and her dad was kind of high-strung. Plus, we'd slept all night on that abandoned point with the windows open. I should have protected her better. Maybe I'd watched snippets of too many action movies, but it seemed to me that falling asleep with a woman was just asking for snakes.

Dawn crossed her arms and rubbed her hands up and down her skin, warming herself. The air was heavy with humidity, and chilly. This was the coldest part of a summer day in Sinnoh. "Faster," she said.

In three weeks I'd had my license, I'd driven as fast as I could every chance I got. Most people, Dawn included, thought this was not a good idea. It was a rush for her to tell me to go faster. I pressed the gas harder. "Are you sure you want me to take you home? We could run away together."

I felt her looking at me. I met her gaze and held it for one second, two seconds, three seconds longer than I should have been keeping my eyes off the road.

The truck hit gravel. I swung the steering wheel to point the truck back onto pavement.

She laughed. "Better not."

"You thought about it, though." I grinned.

"I did." She slid her hand onto my thigh, which was bare below my shorts. "Go faster."

I put more pressure on the gas. The engine revved higher, echoing weirdly against the dense woods flashing past the open windows on both sides.

"No, wait, stop, stop, stop!"

I stomped on the brake and threw my arm in front of her to keep her from going through the windshield before I realized she had put on her seat belt. (I hadn't.) The truck screeched to a halt. I expected to see the huge body of a deer I'd just missed as it dashed into the woods and escaped - but outside the truck, the morning was pink and still. "What is it?"

"Sorry," she sighed. "I just realized we need to pick up where we left off last night and enjoy it for a few minutes. I have a feeling we won't get to do it again for a while."

Her eyes were sad as she said this. I should have bear-hugged her and comforted her. But, when the girl of your dreams, who you've been chasing for years and have finally caught, tells you to make out with her, are you going to tell her you'd rather just hold each other for a while? Why, hell no. I put the truck in park.

I put my hands on her face and kissed her. She opened her mouth. Funny that she'd been so unsure about this when we'd first fake dated a couple of weeks ago, but she caught on quickly. Sometimes, she even took the lead. Like now. She drew back from the kiss, touched her lips so gently to mine, and licked my bottom lip with the very tip of her tongue. A chill ran through me and I shuddered.

She kissed me again. "Mmm," she said. I thought she was telling me how much she enjoyed it - I agreed completely. When her shoulders shook, I figured out she was crying.

I kissed her cheek. "Hey. Don't cry." I couldn't stand to see her cry. She'd already bawled in the boat when we got together. I'd gotten a little teary-eyed myself, which my brothers loved. It had been such a relief to call her mine after wanting her for so long. For the happiest day of my life, the one I'd dreamed about forever, we sure were crying a lot.

As it turned out, we would have a good reason.

But then, in the truck, I didn't know this. I wiped her tears away with my thumb. "Why are you crying?"

"We're finally together," she sobbed, "and now we won't go out for the rest of the summer. My dad will ground me until Labor Day!"

"You don't know that." I ran my fingers through her hair. "We'll explain what happened. It was an honest mistake. Don't cry. Not yet." She was making me antsier than I let on, though. I pulled away from her, put the truck back in drive, and sped down the road.

"What _did_ happen?" she asked. "Clearly, we don't find each other as exciting as we thought."

I laughed. "I remember you biting my earlobe-"

"I remember biting your earlobe," she said dreamily.

"-but sleep finally caught up with me."

"Me too." She scooted closer to me on the seat and put her head on my shoulder.

I drove with my left hand and slipped my right arm around her waist. For thirty more seconds, she was my girlfriend.

Finally, I parked in her driveway. "I'll walk you to the d-"

She slammed the passenger door and dashed through the trees to her house. One of her pink flip-flops flew off. but she never slowed down. I don't know why she was in such a hurry. Seemed to me that 6:01 a.m. was just as grounded as 6:02 a.m.

Her father was already yelling at her when he opened the door. His voiced faded and the bright rectangle of light shrank as he swung the door closed behind her.

I murmured, "Happy sweet sixteen, Dawn."

I backed down her driveway, drove a few feet, and pulled into my own driveway. My mom must have heard my truck because she was waiting in our own open doorway in her bathrobe with her arms crossed.

Up until the moment I saw her, I'd planned to tiptoe into the house and hope nobody had missed me. It had worked for my brothers before. If I did encounter my parents, I would tell them the truth: Dawn and I had fallen asleep, we never meant to be out until morning, and I was sorry.

But there was something about seeing my mother there, arms folded, ready for a fight, which pissed me off. Instead of standing on the porch apologizing to her, I squeezed past her into the house as if nothing was wrong. And I said, "You're up early."

She grabbed my ear _hard_ and walked me to the kitchen and pointed to an empty chair at the table. "Sit. Down."

I huffed out a sigh. It was a little early for everyone to be up and getting ready to go to work at the marina down the hill. My dad sat at the table, drinking coffee. He didn't share my Mom's frazzled appearance, though. I doubt he'd lost much sleep over my status as a missing person. My oldest brother, Paul, must have been asleep too - he never got up until the very last second - but my brother, Gary, lounged at the head of the table, smirking at me. I gathered he was still mad at me for nearly breaking his nose when he jumped on me a few nights ago. The swelling had gone down and it seemed to be healing nicely, so I didn't know what his problem was.

"Sit down," Mom repeated.

I pulled out a chair and sat. I wanted something to drink first, but something told me I should not ask right now.

Mom sat directly across from me, where she could vaporize my brain with her stare. "Where were you?"

The fact that I was only two minutes away from home and could see the house the entire time I was gone might have helped me. But, I planned a whole summer of taking Dawn back to that spot. I didn't want to give it away. Gary and Paul would be lying in wait for us next time, armed with camera phones and cans of whipped cream. I said, "We fell asleep."

Gary snorted into his apple juice.

Mom silenced him with her stare. Then, she turned it back on me. "Trevor Berlitz called me and woke me up in the middle of the night. Imagine how embarrassed I was that my son had his daughter out at all hours, after he has been so good to us. He did some fancy legal footwork to get Paul out of that speeding ticket."

"And his second speeding ticket," I said.

"And his second speeding ticket," she acknowledged.

"And he got Gary out of _his_ ticket." I took the opportunity to remind her how horrible her other sons were. Since I'd been driving for three weeks, I was still golden, at least in that area.

Gary mimicked me in a bratty tone. "And he got Gary out of _his_ speeding ticket."

"That is not the point!" Mom yelled. "You expect me to call Dawn's father and tell him you had Dawn out until six a.m. because you fell asleep?"

"Well, we did." That's all I said, though I wanted to tell her we'd gambled away the night and my granddad's life savings at a casino. She was acting like we'd done something that awful.

Judging from the look on her face, you'd think I'd gone ahead and said this. Gary didn't help by prompting me, "Why'd you fall asleep? What were you doing before that?"

Mom watched me expectantly, as if she wanted to know the answer to that question too, and as if my older brother had just as much right as my parents to interrogate me.

"Nothing," I said.

Gary laughed.

"Nothing?" Mom yelled.

No, not nothing. The highlight of the night, at least for me, had been when Dawn wrestled me down on the seat of the truck, straddled me, held my wrists above my head, and kissed me neck. She'd pretended she overpowered me. I could have easily pushed her off me, but I didn't. It was very sexy. I could still feel her lips on my neck. God that had felt good.

"Ash!"

I jumped when Mom hollered at me again. My hand was pressed to my neck where Dawn's lips had been. I put my hand down. "Maybe not nothing, but not what you smutty-minded people are thinking."

"You just stayed out all night with the girl you've had a crush on since you were four," Mom said, "and nothing happened? What do you take me for, Ash?"

I wondered how my mom knew I'd had a crush on Dawn for so long. That was creepy. But what I yelled back was, "What do you take _me_ for? What do you think I did to her? You think I'm stupid?"

"No!" Gary gasped.

Normally Mom would have rushed to my defense over that sarcasm from Gary. Of all the things Gary and Paul picked on me about, my ADHD and my tendency to flunk school because of it was the one topic that was off-limits, at least while Mom was around.

This time she said, "I'm beginning to wonder. Dawn's father wants to ban you and Dawn from seeing each other for the rest of your lives."

I said, "He can try."

"Ash, your father and I want to help you, but we can't if you don't help yourself. You're not doing yourself any justice with that attitude."

"What attitude? I don't think I'm being helped right now."

"This is exactly what I'm talking about," Mom snapped. "I was worried sick last night. Your father was worried sick."

Dad shrugged.

"Trevor was worried sick about his only daughter staying out all night on her sixteenth birthday," Mom shrieked, "and you don't even take it seriously."

"It's hard to take it seriously when I'm in trouble for something I didn't even do," I shouted back.

"Son," my dad said.

"What!"

He stared at me for a few long seconds, letting me know I'd crossed the line, before he answered. "Shut your mouth and listen to your mother."

"Dawn's father will calm down," Mom said. "He always does. When that happens, your father and I will talk to him about letting you see Dawn again. However, in the meantime, you must exercise some restraint. Stay away from her, just as he wants, or we won't be able to put in a good word for you."

"Okay. I'm about to work with her for eight hours at the marina, but I'll take a blindfold."

"You will work on opposite ends of the marina until further notice," Mom said. "You may not go out with her. You may not date her. You may not be her boyfriend. Clear enough?"

Damn. Dawn was right. Only it was worse than her being grounded from going out. I was grounded from _her. _

I stared at Mom, the embodiment of evil sitting across from me in a turquoise bathrobe. Gary had told me since we were kids that I was adopted. He and I looked a lot alike, unfortunately, so I'd assumed he told me that just to be mean. Now I knew he'd told me the truth. A real mom couldn't be that cruel.

"You can't do that," I breathed. "No."

"I can," she said, "and I am. Dawn's father informed me at about three thirty this morning that if we found the two of you alive, you would not date each other again. I have to agree with him until you show us more maturity."

I turned to my only chance left. "Dad," I pleaded, "this is so _fucking_ ridiculous."

Mom gaped at me. So did Gary. The difference was that Gary was half smiling, and Mom looked like she might climb over the table in her bathrobe and stab me with a butter knife.

Even Dad shook his head and said, "Consider yourself lucky. Dawn's dad wants you to go to jail."

"But for now," Mom seethed, "go to your room."

Like I was five! Punished for this made-up adult behavior as if I was in kindergarten. "No," I said. "I have to get read for work, and I'm hungry."

"Go to your room!" Mom and Dad yelled at the same time.

Just as well. I was beginning to feel sick to my stomach. I scraped my chair back from the table as loudly as I could, stepped over Gary's leg, which he'd positioned to trip me, and stomped through the living room to the stairs.

As I rounded the corner I collided with Paul crouching on the bottom step. His eyes widened at me. I'd caught him listening.

He recovered and said, without missing a beat, "I thought you were going to pull it off until you said _fucking_."

"Thanks for your support," I grumbled. "You left me there to bleed out."

He held up his hands. "I don't have a dog in this fight."

I elbowed him as I passed him on the stairs. "If you were in this shit, I would have helped you."

"How?" he called after me. "By setting the curtains on fire to create a diversion?"

At least Gary couldn't follow me. He and Paul shared a room when Paul was home from college. I'd had my own room since I was five and Gary wrote on my face with permanent marker while I was asleep. I reached the top of the stairs, stalked into my room, and slammed the door hard enough to bounce every football trophy on my shelves.

I leaped across the room to catch last year's tenth grade player-of-the-year trophy, presented to me at a ceremony that Gary had laughed all the way through. I carefully set it back on the shelf. But I was thinking that Gary and Paul had a point. I was a loser. If Paul had stayed out until morning with his brand new girlfriend-who-was-like-a-daughter-to-Mom, Mom would have thought that was fine. Her firstborn could do no wrong. And if Gary had done it, he could have talked his way out of it. Whereas, I'd dug my own grave. I couldn't do anything right.

I fished my cell phone out of my pocket and pressed the button for Dawn's house. Her dad might answer, but that was okay. We couldn't get in any worse trouble.

One ring. We should have ran away, after all. Two rings. I'd saved a couple of thousand dollars of my own money from working at the marina over the years. I had known it would come in handy someday. I'd always suspected I'd end up on the run from the law sooner or later, since I was forever getting blamed for things I didn't do. Three rings. The money would tide us over until we both got jobs at a marina in a different town. Of course, we would need references from our previous employer. I doubt Mom would cooperate.

"Hello," Dawn answered. She was hoarse.

"Dawn."

"Ash," she whispered. "I can't talk long or my dad will catch me. He is insane. He thinks we spent the night in some kinky love grotto. It's so unfair. He has no idea what dorks we are."

"My parents are the same." In defeat, I flopped backward onto my bed. The bed Dawn should have visited sooner or later. But considering the last half hour, that would never happen. "Now you can cry."

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**Author's Notes: Uh Oh~ Nope, I took no time to jump into things...it's how it's supposed to be ;) So, this was my first time writing Ash's POV. I hope I did good, well, did I? :o Tell me! His POV will be consistent in the story, just like Dawn's. By the way, yes, I know he's OOC. If you hadn't realized in the last story (which I think everyone did) he is OOC. No regular Ash :)**

**AAAH! My mom just brought me Pokemon SoulSilver by surprise :DDDD Apparently she went to Walmart for more than just grocery shopping ^_^ I was sooo happy and hyper and I still am XD**

**I plan on updating this Wednesday on July 4th, just because it's July 4th XD - Independence Day: the day we (Well, me, and those who live in my area) became free from England :D. No promises, though. I'll have to force myself to stop playing SoulSilver in order to write xD Hopefully, I'll manage. You'll see if it worked if I update on July 4th :)**

**Well, I hope you all enjoyed this chapter! :) Please review~**

**- Angel ^_^**


	3. Dawn: Another Day at the Marina

**Author's Notes: _o/ Hi guys! :) Yeah, I obviously didn't update on the fourth of July xD. But not because I was so attatched to SoulSilver xD this chapter just came out longer than what I expected it to be. So yeah, that's why :p Hehe.**

**Thank you guys for the awesome reviews! ^_^ **

**Now on to the chapter! :) Enjoy!**

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Dawn: Another Day at the Marina

After a shower, I took extra time to dry my hair. Despite the fact that Ash and I had gotten each other in so much trouble - or maybe because of it - I wanted to make sure I looked as pretty for him as I had last night with my ominously good hair.

Of course, this was ridiculous. All my efforts would be for naught. If Mrs. Ketchum stuck me in the warehouse, my blue crowning glory would be full of boat grease and spiders by nine a.m. Also, I didn't want to be late for work. Not this morning.

I did, however, want my dad to embark on his Sunday morning routine of going back to bed before I got downstairs. I had never seen him as angry as he was when I came home an hour ago, and I did not want a recap.

No such luck. When I popped into the kitchen, my dad and my brother leaned against the counter with their arms folded. Dad still looked red, but at least he wasn't yelling anymore. I stepped through the doorway just in time to hear him say, "You take care of your sister today."

Drew gave my dad a two finger salute.

Dad turned to me. "And you." Every morning that I'd gone to play with the boys when we were little, or I'd gone to work at the marina this summer and last, he'd told me, _Watch out around those boys._ This time he couldn't muster the words. Focusing on me, he opened his mouth, breathed in, and breathed out.

He turned to my brother and repeated, "Take care of your sister."

My brother and I closed the door behind us - softly, so as not to startle an already shell-shocked father - and walked through the garage to the yard, heading past the Ketchums' house to the marina. As soon as we were out of Dad's earshot, I said, "Well! It's a good thing you're not serious about taking care of me. Dad can keep me from going out with Ash, but he'll never see me on the lake. He won't know about anything I do at the marina, because you won't tell him. Hold up a minute."

I'd been limping behind my brother on one bare foot and one flip-flop, scanning the yard for a flash of pink as we went. I remembered having both flip-flops on at the bridge. After that, it got fuzzy. All I knew was that I'd been wearing only one when I arrived home an hour ago. My dad had characterized this as my telltale state of undress.

Now I dove into an azalea and brought out my flip-flop. I shoved my toes into it and turned around.

Drew frowned at me.

Suddenly I realized how it looked to him and to my dad. "Come on," I pleaded. "A flip-flop in the bushes does not mean anything. If you ever see my bikini top hanging from the bird feeder, I give you permission to raise an eyebrow."

He cleared his throat. "Dad _will _see you on the lake. While you were in the shower, he went out on the screened porch, dragged the lawn chair into position, and made sure he could see the lake through the trees. After work I'm supposed to get out the ladder and clip more branches out of the way."

"Oh."

"And if I see you with Ash, I have to tell Dad."

"You are not serious," I wailed.

"I promised Dad. It's a big brother's duty. Just because you've lost his trust doesn't mean that I-"

"I didn't do anything to lose his trust," I interrupted. "Ash and I fell asleep. That's the truth. You know Ash is harmless."

"I do _not_," he said sternly.

"Well, not harmless, but he wouldn't hurt _me_."

"He wouldn't mean to," Drew acknowledged. "But Ash's got it bad for you, Dawn. And sometimes what Ash intends to do and what he actually does are two different things."

I scowled down the hill. Early morning mist rose from the smooth lake and evaporated as it touched the sun. A little over two weeks ago, I'd skipped happily toward that mist, knowing it would burn off to reveal a whole summer day working with Gary. A week ago, I'd still _thought _I was after Gary, but I'd fallen for Ash, whether I knew it or not. Yesterday Ash had won me over. It had been the best birthday ever.

We'd screwed it up already. Literally. We were the only two teenagers in the world who could get in trouble for hitting a home run when we hadn't even gotten to second base. Now the fog over the lake looked menacing. It lapped at the marina piers and curled toward the warehouse and the showroom. It threatened to grab the little love affair between Ash and me and drag it under the surface of the lake, never to be seen again.

Then Drew said, "I have to tell Dad if I see you with Ash. Just don't let me see you."

"Thank you," I gushed. I would have hugged him if that wouldn't have been weird. Instead, he turned to walk toward the marina again, and I skipped beside him.

What a relief that somebody was on our side. The situation had seemed bad this morning after Dad yelled at me. It had seemed downright hopeless after I talked to Ash on the phone and he told me he was as grounded from me as I was from him. But I figured everybody would cool down after a few days. Yesterday, my dad had been happy Ash and I were a couple, and Ash's mom had helped throw us together in the first place. It wasn't logical for them to do a one-eighty just because Ash and I had stayed out all night.

Or maybe it _was _logical, but it wasn't _fair._

Now that we had my brother as an ally, I felt better. I was sure I could fix everything. As we shuffled across the mat of pine needles, I asked him, "Can you talk to Dad for me?"

My brother eyed me. I didn't blame him. Dad had put on quite a spectacle this morning. His friendly lawyer facade had crumbled completely after a night of dead-or-missing daughter and no sleep. He yelled at me all the way through breakfast, and I had the strangest experience of being the unreasonable one in the argument. Unlike him, I'd gotten plenty of rest. I'd slept through the night just dandy on Ash's chest. I had felt awful about keeping my dad awake and worried - until he started yelling.

"Can you?" I prompted my brother.

"Dad's pretty mad," he said.

"Really," I said flatly. "I did not get that at _all._"

"You should ask Joy," he said.

"I thought of that." If anybody besides my brother would believe Ash and I didn't deserve to be treated like sexual deviants, it was my ex-nanny, Joy, who was now my dad's girlfriend. I'd given her the play-by-play over the past few weeks. She knew I'd gone after Gary, caught Ash instead, and decided I'd netted the right boy after all.

But something about the idea of going to her for help made me uncomfortable. All those years she was our nanny, my brother and I thought we were pulling something over on Joy. The Ketchum boys thought the same thing. Recently, watching her with the new family she worked for across the lake, I'd realized she let us get away with things on purpose, to learn lessons. She knew me a little too well. This was disturbing on its own, but it was doubly disturbing that this person who knew me a little too well wore hemp shorts and Birkenstocks in public.

Plus, she'd warned me a week ago that seemingly innocent Ash was trouble. And she told me that despite this, nobody would forbid me to go out with him. This was the one thing she'd been wrong about.

A very important oversight!

Plus, "Everything changed yesterday when she started dating Dad."

My brother nodded. "It's disconcerting."

"Very disconcerting." I hauled open the door to the marina office and waved him inside. "And I'm not sure she's on my team anymore." I stepped over the threshold after him, into enemy territory.

Crowded with my brother and me in Mrs. Ketchum's tiny office were three, bare-chested boys wearing nothing but board shorts. They smelled better than usual, since it was so early and they hadn't spent the whole day sweating in the sun. Not that I minded their scent all that much - especially when Ash, who was standing closest to Mrs. Ketchum at her desk, peered at me over Gary and Paul.

Since he'd dropped me off after our disastrous date, my mind had worked furiously to punch its way out of this box we'd built for ourselves. But now, as he looked over at me with his pale brown eyes so big and mysterious in his tanned face and his black hair carelessly messy - _now _I knew that if we didn't find a way to convince our parents to let us be together, this was going to seem like one endless summer.

"Ash," Mrs. Ketchum said. Somehow she conveyed a lot of disgust in that one name. Having raised three boys close in age, Mrs. Ketchum was good at this sort of thing.

"Yes, ma'am," Ash said politely, and therefore sarcastically.

I tried to catch his eye and give him a warning look. Our romance was at stake here. I didn't think this was a good time to be sarcastic.

"You've got gas," Mrs. Ketchum said.

Paul and Gary cracked up. Some jokes never got old, at least to teenage boys whose little brother was in trouble.

"I figured," Ash muttered. Heading for the office door on his way down to the marina's floating gas station, he pushed his way past Paul and Gary. He even shoved my brother. I would have found this angry-at-the-world act kind of sexy if things hadn't been so serious. We were in enough hot water.

He slid past me, his chest warm against my bare arm. I looked up into his eyes and watched him as he moved past me. My skin tingled wherever he touched me, like sand sparkling and swirling in the lake when the water was stirred. He filled the sunny doorway for a second. Then he was gone down the wooden stairs to the floating dock.

I turned back toward Mrs. Ketchum's desk. She and the three remaining boys stared at me like they'd never seen me before. Like I was Dawn Berlitz, Teen Geek and Fashion Disaster, transformed into an underage sex goddess. Just the effect I'd been going for two weeks ago when I was trying to hook Gary. Now that I was in trouble, not so good. To assure them I was the same old Dawn, I said, "Funny. I figured you'd give _me _gas."

"Ew," Gary said. Paul fanned the air to dispel the pretend smell, and my brother took a step away from me.

"Gary and Drew," Mrs. Ketchum called, "you're in the warehouse."

My brother amiably headed toward the warehouse door. Gary put one hand on Mrs. Ketchum's shoulder. "Are you sure you don't need help here in the showroo-" He stopped midsentence when Mrs. Ketchum glared at him. "On second thought, I'll see if Green needs any help in the warehouse. Good suggestion." He crossed his eyes at Paul and me as he slipped past us out the office door.

"And you two," Mrs. Ketchum said to Paul and me. "We sold a lot of stock over the festival weekend. You're delivering boats."

Paul took the stack of tickets she handed him. "Score!" he exclaimed, because the boys considered this the choice job. Then he glanced at me. "No offense. I didn't mean you."

"Nice." I'd been so focused on the catastrophe with Ash, I hadn't even processed that there were a lot of sex jokes in my future, courtesy of rude boys. I approached Mrs. Ketchum's desk cautiously, because she looked like she'd had just about enough. "I wanted to remind you that you do not allow me to deliver boats, as I have been known to crash them."

"It's time you earned your keep around here, Dawn," Mrs. Ketchum snapped. "You've had your boater's license for almost a year. Now you've turned sixteen. Whether or not you've learned left from right, you need to act like a grown-up. You can't rely on the boys to do everything for you. Take some responsibility."

My jaw dropped lower and lower as she said this. First of all, I worked hard around the marina, mostly, and she paid me minimum wage. What did she expect me to do, scrub the wharf with a toothbrush?

Actually, as she seemed pretty miffed, I would not have suggested this, even in jest.

Second of all, bringing up the fact that I was directionally challenged was a low blow, since my handicap had caused me to wreck on my wakeboard and bash my forehead just three days ago.

And finally, the suggestion that I had been careless and irresponsible in sullying her youngest child with my sexiness...well, that called for a retort. I shifted my dropped jaw to one side and gritted my teeth with the effort not to say a word. I could still salvage my relationship with Ash and convince our parents to let us date. I knew I could if I just kept my mouth shut for now, which, let me tell you, was about as ridiculous an idea as my sudden transformation into a teenage temptress.

Staying silent became even more difficult when, from behind me, Paul moaned, "Woooo," as if his mom had dissed me good.

I pressed my lips together and backed out of the room, without so much as a "Yes, ma'am." I was afraid of what I might say if I said anything at all.

Paul moved past me and slid a few sheets of paper from his mother's printer. "Hey," she protested when he snagged a black marker and a roll of tape, but he just followed me out.

In the sun, with the office door safely closed behind us, he asked, "Why couldn't you and Ash hook up last summer too, and the summer before? You two are crazy. Sure beats three-on-two water polo for my entertainment dollar."

It was imperative that I pretend nothing about this bugged me. To Paul, and especially to Gary, any inkling Ash and I were really worried would be like blood in the water to a shark. I waved at the paper in Paul's hand. "What's with the school supplies?"

He handed me the tape. Spreading one sheet of paper against the side of the building, he covered it with a big black _L _in marker. He wrote an _R _on the other sheet and tried to hand them both to me. "Tape these on either side of you in the boat. They'll keep you straight."

I looked at the _L _and _R,_ then at him. "I know my left from my right, thank you very much."

"Okay then." He pulled the boat tickets from his pocket and examined one. "The first place we're going is about five miles to the right."

Before I thought, I gazed in that direction. Not that I could really pick out a house so far away along the forested shoreline.

"Caught ya," Paul said. "Your other right."

Like Ash had taught me, I made an _L_ with the finger of my supposedly right hand. If it had been my right hand, the _L _would have been backward. Oops. "That's not fair. Now you've got me thinking about it, which is what confuses me." I took the sheets from Paul anyway. I definitely didn't want either of us to return them to Mrs. Ketchum in her office just then. Judging from her current mood, I should steer clear of her face for a couple of decades. We trotted down the steps to the wharf.

"So...," he said. "Did you and Ash do it or not?"

Risking death by taking my eyes away from the stairs beneath my flip-flops, I looked up at Paul.

Suddenly I remembered the one time he and I had kissed, when I was eleven years old and he was fourteen and clearly very pedophilic and misguided, or perhaps just desperate. It was an awful lip-lock, especially compared with every bone-melting kiss I'd shared with Ash in the past few weeks.

Nevertheless, that's what I thought about as I looked up at this nineteen-year-old college boy. He was asking me if I'd had sex with his brother. If I _had, _I would have been beyond mortified at this question. In fact, I probably would have refused to leave my house this morning, or ever. Joy could quit her gig with the family across the lake and home school me.

However, as I had _not,_ I found the question interesting. Empowering, even. People didn't consider me a child anymore, or a tomboy. They considered me trouble in high heels (or, at the moment flip-flops). Maybe being an underage sex goddess wasn't so bad. I fought the urge to pat my boobs underneath my bikini and test whether they'd grown.

"Ash told Mom you didn't do it," Paul prompted me.

I blinked, realizing Paul and I had paused on the stairs, facing each other. I galloped down them again, asking him over my shoulder, "Why's your mom so mad, then?"

"Mom never believes Ash," Paul said. "And Ash didn't make it easier on himself." We'd reached the bottom of the steps. He nodded to the speedboat the boys used as a chaser when they made deliveries. "You drive the fifteen-thousand-dollar boat and I'll drive the fifty-thousand-dollar, brand new one. Sound okay?"

"Fine," I muttered, stepping into the chaser boat. I did need to practice driving, even if it was a boat rather than a car. Every bit helped. I wanted to take my driving test this week - as soon as I could get off work for a few hours, drag a licensed driver with me, and convince someone to trust me with their insured vehicle. Ash and I had intended that licensed driver be him and that insured vehicle to be his truck, but it looked like we'd blown any chance of that.

Or _he _had. As I puttered through the wharf behind Paul's boat, I felt bitter that I couldn't grin and wave to a hot Ash at the gas pump. Hot as in obscenely good-looking with his shirt off, _and _hot as in an air temperature of eighty degrees at seven thirty in the morning. I couldn't risk his mom seeing me flirting with him - not that he himself seemed to comprehend such concepts as _subtlety _and _tactics._

At least I didn't have to stare at the highway bridge all day like he did, with _DAWN LOVES ASH _freshly painted among the other graffiti of love. Last night it had seemed daring and romantic. Now I wished the words weren't there to taunt Ash - in red, no less - or to irk our parents further.

I throttled up to keep pace with Paul as he arced to the right, or left, or whatever. Upstream. Away from the highway bridge. And I pondered what Paul had said: Ash didn't make it easier on himself. _What had Ash done?_

I couldn't ask Paul about this at the house where we delivered the boat. We had to make nice with the customer. We made nice so well that Paul came away with money, which he pocketed. Then he saw me watching him and guiltily handed me a five without showing me what the other bills were. To determined whether I was being cheated (highly likely), I would consult Ash later on the etiquette of sharing these tips. If I was ever allowed to speak to him.

I couldn't ask Paul what had transpired this morning between Mrs. Ketchum and Ash when we launched the chaser boat either, because the motor was too loud. And when we idled it back to the wharf, Mrs. Ketchum stood in the office door, motioning to me with both hands above her head and phone message slips between her fingers.

"You worried a lot of people last night," she said as she handed me the slips and walked into the show-room, leaving me alone in the office. I examined the messages.

For: Junior  
Taken by: Gary  
Time: 8-ish  
From: May  
Message: I was at your house with Drew last night when you didn't show up. I take it you're still alive or Drew would have called me. Are we still on for this afternoon?

That slip was scrawled as if Gary couldn't care less whether I could read it (surprise). The next message, however, he'd taken neatly, as if afraid of offending his ex-girlfriend when I didn't get the gist.

For: Junior  
Taken by: Gary  
Time: 8:16 a.m.  
From: Misty  
Message: Dawn, your dad called me last night looking for you and woke me up! I was worried about you! May is still bringing me over to wakeboard this afternoon and I will kill Ash for you if you want me to! Your dad is lame!

I called both girls back to confirm our wakeboarding date and let them know I was alive. Hanging up quickly so I didn't get run off the phone by Mrs. Ketchum before my break time was up, I turned my attention to the message that really mattered.

For: Dawn  
Taken by: D. Ketchum  
Time: 8:30 a.m.  
From: Joy  
Message: Call me.

Joy answered the phone just as the machine picked up. She sounded out of breath. "Baileys' residence."

"You've got to talk Dad down for me," I whispered into the phone.

"I don't think I can do that, Dawn. Excuse me." More faintly, with her mouth away from the receiver, she called, "Cameron, not on the cat. No, sir. Let kitty go." A _thump _sounded loud enough that I held the phone away from my ear, and even at that distance I could hear horrific cat noises.

Then she came back, but after I heard what she had to say, I wished she hadn't. "Your father was terribly upset last night, Dawn, and rightly so. He thinks you and Ash aren't mature enough to handle the responsibility of being alone together, and I support him in that decision."

"What's the matter with you?" I demanded. "You sound like some kind of authority figure. Is someone making you say these things? Are you being held against your will? Tap once on the receiver for kidnappers and twice for spies."

"This is no laughing matter."

"It sure the hell isn't. Any other time you would have talked some sense into Dad for me, but now you refuse because you're sleeping with the enemy."

"Dawn!" she exclaimed, sounding genuinely appalled at my jab at her for going on a date with my dad yesterday. Not much appalled Joy - not that she let on, anyway - so I actually squirmed in the office chair as she scolded me.

"That is a completely inappropriate comment."

"No, _Sleeping with the Enemy _is a 1990s Julia Roberts movie," I backtracked. I'd never seen it the whole way through, but during puberty Gary had been very fond of the bathtub scene and had subjected the rest of us to it over and over. "Your role as my nanny was to help my dad see that it was safe and healthy for me to play with boys. You and I have an unspoken yet binding agreement that your role should continue now that you are my ex-nanny."

"We have no such thing," she said haughtily, like an ex-nanny without a sense of humor. "Ash's mother told me Ash's side of the story and how he expressed it to her. Sounds to me like Ash needs to grow up. Mackenzie, kitty does not like that. Mac-" In the background, kitty sang "The Star-Spangled Banner." "I've got to go," Joy said.

"Wait," I said. "What do you mean, Ash needs to-"

Joy hung up.

I stared at the phone in my hand. A boat horn honked outside. Paul idled a sparkling new boat around the chaser boat. I galloped down the steps to the wharf and leaped into the driver's seat of the chaser. Before switching on the engine, I shouted through cupped hands to Paul, "What did you mean when you said Ash didn't make it easier on himself this morning?"

Paul shrugged. "For starters, when he first came in this morning, he said to my mom, 'You're up early.' This time we're going to the left." I could have sworn he pointed to the right as he said this, and he roared off.

Over the course of the day, I was able to drag more information out of Paul and piece together the rest of Ash's defiant act, full of sassy one-liners he would not have uttered if he were trying to get out of trouble. He'd even said...a cuss word you should never say in front of your mother!

Paul shared this last tidbit late in the day as we idled into the wharf after making our final delivery. Down on the floating dock, Ash finished topping off a boater's tank and straightened with the gas nozzle in his hand in time to watch us pass.

I saw us through his eyes. Me, his girlfriend, in a bikini, wearing big movie-starlet sunglasses, behind the wheel of the boat. His older brother, shirtless, whispering (well, shouting, but still) in my ear.

Though Ash was twenty yards from me, I could almost see those little creases form between his brows when he frowned. When he was worried. When he was jealous.

Sure enough, he slammed the nozzle into the gas pump, tossed one last furious look over his shoulder at me, and stomped up the wooden steps.

At this point it occurred to me that, despite my best efforts, Ash might prove difficult to date.

And I was right.

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**Author's Notes: And finished ;) Hope you all enjoyed this chapter :) Hm...I don't have much to say today xD Um...I'll probably update sometime next week. :) **

**Well, please, please review! :D **

**- Angel _o/**


	4. Ash: Jealousy Strikes!

**Author's Notes: _o/ Hi guys! :) Sorry I'm a little late with the update. I have no excuse for that really xD Anyway, this chapter is Ash pov! ;D I love writing in his pov. It's really fun! So I hope you guys like reading in his pov. :)**

**Thank you for the nice reviews I received for the last chapter :) As you all know, I love to get your reviews :) So thank you so much! **

**Okay, last chapter, we left off with Dawn's pov...and Ash being jealous...**

**Enjoy! :)**

* * *

Ash: Jealousy Strikes!

"Where's Dawn?" I asked as I threw a life vest at Paul in the wakeboarding boat. I was part of a line. Gary in the warehouse (where it was cool and he wouldn't melt) tossed the wakeboarding equipment we needed to Green, and Green tossed it to me. Then I tossed it from the wharf down to Paul. Or threw it, because I was pissed.

Paul caught the life vest just before it smacked him in the face. "Why the hell are you asking me?"

"I figured you'd know, since you were hanging all over her just now."

"I was _not_," Paul insisted. He glanced around like he was afraid his girlfriend from college, Lauren, would overhear. Unfortunately, she'd gone to Hoenn until the middle of the summer.

Green must have shot Paul a dark look from behind my back. They were best friends, but that only went so far when it came to Dawn. Green thought Paul was too old for her. Damn right.

Paul dropped the life vest and held up both hands. "I did _not._"

Gary's voice echoed inside the warehouse: "Aw, Ash is in wuv, and he misses Dawn."

A life vest hit me in the back. I turned to pick it up and saw that Green wasn't paying attention. His eyes lingered on Paul a moment longer to send his warning about Dawn. Then he told me, "She's teaching May and Misty to board this afternoon, remember?" He nodded toward the house.

Over at the Berlitz' dock, three sunkissed girls in bikinis loaded their boat with gear. Exactly what we were doing but prettier, and nobody was getting hit in the head.

"Ow!" I put one hand to the back of my head where the handle of a ski rope had dinged me and glared at Gary in the darkness of the warehouse.

Dawn _had _told me she was boarding with Misty and May today instead of with us. But in the face of losing her, I'd forgotten. And all day I'd looked forward to spending an hour in our boat with her, the one place where we weren't banned from each other. Dawn was the best wake-boarder we had. A good wakeboarding show in three weeks on the Fourth of July would raise interest in the sport, which would translate into sales for the marina. Maybe my mom was willing to give that up to test my maturity, or what the hell ever, but my dad was easily bought, thank God.

And now this. Dawn had flirted with Paul in the chaser boat, and now she wasn't even coming wakeboarding with us, as she had almost every summer as far back as I could remember. A hot breeze lifted her laughter across the water to me. Her boat looked small. She seemed very far away.

Green pried my fingers from the bundle of ski rope and tossed it down to Paul. "Relax," he told me. "There's a deep breathing exercise for that."

"There's a _pill_ for that," Gary's voice echoed.

Normally, I wouldn't have let the comment pass. Gary loved to jab at me because I didn't take my medicine for ADHD. If I didn't respond, he'd jab at me harder. When I was little enough to complain to my mom about Gary constantly ragging on me, she always told me to ignore him and he'd stop. That might have worked with a normal brother. Gary was not normal.

This time I hardly felt the sting. I watched Dawn push her boat away from her dock with one long leg, toes pointed, and hop in at the last moment before she lost her balance.

The other guys must have been interested as I was in what was going on in the other boat. Gary had dated Misty until she broke up with him a few days ago. There _were_ some people in the world besides me who saw through Gary's pretty-boy act. Green and May had gone out for the first time last night - and judging from the fact that he was not grounded from her, I assumed their date had gone better than mine had with Dawn.

We managed to speed up the equipment line and launch our own boat a few seconds later.

And when I neglected to turn up the music, not one of them said a word. We preferred to hear girls.

Manning the wheel first, I steered the boat into the middle of the lake - far enough from the girls for safety, but close enough that I could hear Dawn explaining to May the starting stance for boarding. Green strapped on his life vest and board and hopped over the side. I would drive him in a couple of big circles on this section of the lake, then Gary would board, then Paul. Lately, they wanted me to board last. That way, if I had to go to the emergency room, they'd already taken their turns.

All three of them boarded better than they had all summer, which didn't take much, since Dawn had been putting us all to shame lately. At least, they looked good as far as I could tell. I was driving, not spotting, so the only glimpses I caught of them were in my rearview mirror as they hung upside down in mid-trick.

And the whole time, I had one eye on the girls' boat. They were never hard to spot. They stayed in one place, with May and then Misty in the water trying to pull up, and Dawn driving and instructing them at the same time. I should have been over there helping her.

_Or Paul should,_ I thought bitterly.

Dawn did not have one eye on me. I didn't know how long I could stand this panicky feeling as I watched her across the water, waiting and wishing for her to glance in my direction. Now I knew how my friends on the football team felt when they drove around town on the slim chance they might cruise by the cute girl they liked in the parking lot of the movie theater. I'd never felt that desperate about Dawn. Ever since we were kids, she'd sat right beside me in the boat. We might not have been officially together until yesterday, but at least she'd always been nearby.

Now I couldn't even tell what she was saying to the other girls. The topic had better be boarding. It had better not be dumping me for the next Ketchum brother on her list.

Or for Kenny Kengo. As if it weren't enough for my brothers to talk to Dawn when I couldn't, Kenny roared past in a ski boat with some of his rich, spoiled friends from Johto. His grandparents owned the snooty private yacht club a few miles downriver. Our marina had banded with the others to host the festivals on the lake yesterday, but the yacht club topped us all every year by putting on an enormous Fourth of July fireworks show over the lake.

I'd known Kenny for a while. He showed up to our parties sometimes, and rumor had it he was blazing a trail through the ladies. He had brown hair and dark eyes and a habit of staring through people with his eyeballs wide open and unblinking like an owl. Girls thought this was sexy. They said it was like he could see right through them into their souls. I thought this was very strange.

I had no reason to dislike him. I'd never considered him a threat before. Usually he water-skied on the yacht club side of the lake. Usually he didn't venture this far from home. Usually he did slalom through our wakeboarding course while waving to my girlfriend. Usually she did not wave back. There was a first time for everything - everything awful, that is - and every bit of it was happening to me today.

Finally, it was my turn to board. Kenny disappeared around the bend. I had nobody left to take out my aggression on but my brothers. Instead of buckling on my board in the boat and flipping backward over the side like a scuba diver, as I normally would have, I waited for Paul to crawl out of the water onto the deck in back. I pretended to slip while getting in, and I shoved him with my shoulder.

"Oh, man, you have pushed the wrong brother," he told me. I thought this was more of a jab at Gary than at me. I'd whipped Gary a couple of times recently.

Then Paul pushed me so hard, my board slid all the way across the deck, and I smacked into the water on my ear.

I shook off the pain underwater and surfaced. Now Dawn watched me from her boat. She was waiting for me to come up, either because she was concerned or because she was simply paying attention to me at the precise moment I didn't want it.

She gave me a thumbs-up.

"Sunglasses." Green stretched his open hand toward me.

"I won't lose them," I said. If I'd managed to keep them on during that dramatic entrance, they weren't in danger of falling off.

"Right," Paul said. "You never lose them."

"Ash's sunglasses are piled up like buried treasure on the bottom of the lake," Dawn giggled as her boat prowled slowly by ours, headed for shore. All three girls waved to us like beauty queens on a parade float. They must have been done for the day.

Her boat sped up then. Over her motor, Green and Gary must not have heard Paul murmur, "Talk about buried treasure," still looking straight at Dawn.

I kicked off my board, pushed it ahead of me, and caught our boat in five strokes, just as Green started the engine. All three of the guys snapped their heads in my direction in surprise as I pitched my board into the boat and pulled myself dripping over the side. Then I punched Paul in the jaw.

It would have connected if I hadn't been wet and Paul hadn't slathered himself in sunscreen. As it was, my fist slipped right off his face. I lost my balance and fell on the floor of the boat. Then he was on top of me, and I knew I was in trouble. But when he tried to pin my arms behind me, his hands slid right off too.

Before he could come after me again, a second set of flip-flops approached my nose and scuffled with Paul's pair. Green was pulling Paul off me. And then Gary caught me in a headlock.

"We're taking impulsive to a new level, aren't we?" Gary shouted in my ear, over the noise of the motor.

"He called Dawn buried treasure!" I meant this for Green. Since Gary held my head down, I had to yell as loudly as I could. "Paul was looking at Dawn and he said, 'Talk about buried treasure!'"

"You did?" I heard Green say. All I could see was the boat's carpet. I could only imagine the look on his face.

"I wasn't talking about her!" Paul bellowed.

"Then who the hell were you talking about?" Gary shrieked.

Gary had a point, for once. Paul had been talking about my girlfriend and Green's sister, or Green's girlfriend, or Gary's ex-girlfriend, who Gary was very touchy about. There was nobody else in the girls' boat. The four of us guys used to comment on girls we saw drive by on the lake (with Dawn in our boat too, rolling her eyes at us.) Paul had picked the wrong girls this time.

Furious as I was, I realized something else was wrong. Even though Gary still held my head down, I was the only one who thought to ask, "Who's driving the boat?"

Over the motor, I heard girls screaming at us the instant before we crashed.

The impact through Gary off me. There was an awful screeching. I scrambled up and saw everybody was on the floor but me now. I jumped into the driver's seat and threw the throttle into reverse.

Too late. We'd puttered into the marina and had hit one of the newer model speedboats. As I backed away from it, I saw the black mark our bumper had made up the side

Worse, my dad stood on the wharf, watching. Funny how whenever I broke a bone, he had to be hunted up, but whenever we damaged the merchandise, he was on hand instantly. Glowering, he showed me his binoculars. Even from a distance, he'd seen everything. Then he pointed the binoculars at me. We'd been through this enough times that I knew what he meant. Whatever the speedboat and our boat needed, I would fix them. He headed back up the steps toward the showroom without a word.

Paul and Gary moaned at me, rubbing it in.

As I idled the boat into the usual space and cut the engine off, Green picked up my broken sunglasses from underfoot and handed them to me. "Looks like that mark will come out with buffing."

"I hope." Bailing out of the boat onto the wharf, I tossed the sunglasses into the trash before Paul and Gary could rib me any more about this awful day. I blinked in the darkness of the warehouse until I could see, and I grabbed the wax and cloth. Then I blinked in the bright sunlight outside and thought I was hallucinating. My first break: Dawn, Misty, and May had parked their boat and were talking to the guys on the wharf. I walked over, gripping the wax and cloth hard in each fist, hoping Dawn wasn't flirting with Paul again, or Gary. Maybe I should put the can of wax down before I found out. It could really hurt somebody.

"Ash," Dawn called, loudly enough for me to hear her, but not so loud that her voice would carry up to my mom in the marina office - or to her dad, who might be listening from their screened porch facing the water. "I came over to get some tips from the boys about teaching May and Misty to board. Of _course_ I did not come over here to see you. How could you think such a thing? That would be disobedient."

I held up the wax. "For my own disobedience, I have to buff the boat. Then I'm going for a jog."

She tilted her head. Probably her eyes widened, but I couldn't see them behind her sunglasses. I hated not being able to see her eyes. She asked, "In this heat?"

I didn't mind jogging in the heat. The heat was a big, friendly animal that liked to wrestle and only occasionally sat on me until I lost my breath. Anyway, she was missing the point. I repeated carefully, "I am _going _for a _jog._"

"I _heard_ you the _first_ time," she said. "It's late afternoon in the middle of June. It's ninety-five degrees out here."

"He means he's _going _for a _jog,_" Misty and May said at the same time.

"He's _going_ for a _jog._" Dawn still didn't get it. I swear she was a blonde trapped in a bluenette's body. Normally her blonde moments were one of the things I loved about her. At the moment, not so much.

Exasperated, Paul told her, "Ash wants _you _to go for a jog too."

She said, "Oh!"

"If you two airheads have to hook up secretly for very long," Gary said, "you're not going to make it."

"Like you're an expert on making relationships work," Misty piped up.

Now Paul and Green moaned, rubbing in the jab at Gary. I couldn't help but chime in. And when I saw the look Gary gave me, I regretted it. I didn't expect him to be on my side against my parents, but I hoped he wouldn't go out of his way to sabotage me. And sabotage was more likely if he and Misty stayed broken up and he stewed in his own juices.

Dawn was thinking the same thing - eying me, or so I thought. I desperately wanted to reach down from the wharf and take those sunglasses off her. She asked me, "Not that I have any interest in this whatsoever, but how long will it take you to buff the boat?"

"An hour," I said.

"Thirty minutes," Green said. "I'll help him. Then I'm taking May bowling, so if you go for a jog, I won't be around to see it."

Dawn mouthed a _thank you _to her brother. "Okay then. Thanks for the wakeboarding tips, guys." She started the engine and cranked the throttle into reverse.

"Wait a minute," Misty protested over the idling engine and the bubbling lake. "I thought we would really get some wakeboarding tips."

"Are you kidding?" Dawn shouted. "You chicks are hopeless." Misty and May laughed with her as the boat floated backward and then idled forward, toward her dock.

We watched them go. Green stared at May's ass in that bikini. Gary pined after Misty. Paul seemed astounded at the whole sight - Dawn had never entertained girlfriends before - but it was impossible to tell which girl he was looking at.

And I decided that if I ever went out with Dawn again, I would install ten or twelve alarm clocks in the trucks to wake us up, just in case. Being grounded from her was torture.

Finally, Green said, "I'll go get some wax."

"Thanks, man." I appreciated him helping me meet with his sister.

"Better you than Paul," Green grumbled. "I know where Paul's been."

Gary snorted.

Paul said, "I already told you, I did _not _come on to Dawn."

He'd better not.

**...**

Half an hour later, I snagged two bottles of water from the fridge. I should have taken only one in case I was intercepted. But even though Dawn and I had kissed a lot in the past week, Dawn was squeamish about drinking after me. We'd shared drinks while riding around in my truck. She'd even used my toothbrush once. And I'd seen her hesitate. Probably because Gary had spit in her coke ten years ago. If I were her, I would be grossed out for a long time too.

Then I headed outside. The heat of the afternoon would take your breath away, but after the frigid air-conditioned house, my skin drank it in. I stuck the bottles of water in the mailbox, which couldn't be seen from my house or Dawn's through the thick trees. She wasn't at the road. Since hanging around our mailboxes would look guilty, she'd probably set off jogging. She was fast for a girl, but I could catch her.

Which way had she gone? We should have discussed this before. But if we'd agreed to go to the left or right, she would have messed it up anyway. I gazed down the street dappled in shade, then turned the other way and jogged into the sun.

Normally I ran to detox my brain when Gary made me so mad I couldn't think straight. This happened once a day or so. Running got my mind off my troubles.

This time, running did not get my mind off Dawn. For one thing, the pokeball pendant she'd given me banged against my breastbone with every step. I didn't want to take it off, though. For another thing, when I finished this run, she would be at the end of it.

Three miles later, I'd returned to the mailboxes. That's when I saw her jogging toward me from the other direction. Her blue ponytail bobbed behind her. She wore nothing but a sports bra and very small running shorts, and her slightly tanned skin shone with sweat. It was almost as good as seeing her in the bikini. Better, in a way. Dawn's body was most beautiful in action.

Dawn's brain, as usual, was a couple of steps behind her body. I swear she stared straight ahead without seeing me for a full ten seconds, listening hard to her music, daydreaming.

Then she broke into the biggest smile. She pulled out her earbuds and stuffed the cords into the armband that held the player. "Mr. Ketchum!" she called in the awful British accent she used when she thought somebody was mad at her. "We shan't meet like this anon. 'Tisn't proper."

It was hard to stay angry. I did my best. "We weren't even apart for twelve hours, and you flirted with Kenny."

"I _waved _to Kenny."

"You flirted with Paul."

"I knew you'd say that." She reached me and put her hands on her hips, breathing hard. "He sat close to me in the boat so we could hear each other over the motor."

I believed her. The thing was - and I knew this was unreasonable - I didn't want her talking to Paul at all.

She bent over and put her hands on her knees. This gave me a nice view down her bra. "Paul and I were talking about _you,_" she panted. "He said that you-" She straightened and looked around us at the woods. "We need to talk, and we can't do it out here."

I stared her down, trying to stay mad at her, trying not to glance at her boobs.

She titled her head to one side and grinned. "You're sexy when you brood."

I pressed my lips together.

"You're cute when you try not to laugh." She tickled my ribs, which were more ticklish than usual because I wasn't wearing a shirt.

I grabbed her hand. With the middle finger of my other hand, I traced the neckline of her bra. I asked appreciatively, "Sports bra or what?"

Her blue eyes widened, the same color as the sky above her, and her lips parted.

Suddenly it was too hot, even for me. We stood on an asphalt road that had been melting in the sun all day. I could hardly breathe the thick air. Her heartbeat raced under my fingertip.

I put my hand down. Then I walked over to the mailbox and slid out the bottles of water. "Do you ever get the feeling you're being watched?" I asked, handing her a bottle.

"Our parents may have mounted closed-circuit cameras in the poison ivy." She uncapped the water and took a long drink.

"I wouldn't put it past my mom at this point." I drank too, and then poured water over my head. Then some over hers.

She sputtered. "My hair just blew around a boat for nine hours, and I ran a few miles on the hottest day of the year. You're ruining my look."

"You'll dry in thirty seconds in this heat." I touched one finger to her wet lips. "And you're beautiful. You'd have to work pretty hard to mess that up."

She moved her head ever so slightly. Her lips slid one millimeter against my fingertip, and electricity rushed through my whole body. I lost my breath again.

"Come on," I choked out. With one last glance around our empty yards and the deserted road, I took her hand and pulled her away from our houses, toward the woods.

* * *

**Author's Notes: And finished! Hope you all enjoyed this chapter ;) I know you're all curious to know what's going to happen in the "woods" ;) so I'm putting up that chapter this week. Actually, I'm going to be updating this more. It's summer and I'm out of school in the house pretty much all day since I'm in recovery mode so I have plenty of time to write. I'm just being lazy xD So, I'm gonna stop being lazy and get more chapters up :) I do want this story to be finished before I go back to school. But chapters won't be going up rapidly, maybe like two a week depending on how long a chapter is and how long it'll take me to write.**

**And for those of you reading Cwohs2, the update is coming, next week hopefully. I've been slacking on that really bad xD. But yeah, hopefully I can have that chapter up next week :)**

**Thanks for reading! :D Please leave a review!**

**_o/ Bye! :)**

**- Angel**


	5. Dawn: Like My Plan?

**Author's Notes: _o/ Hello everyone~ Sorry for the late update. I had just a little trouble filling in the blanks with this chapter, but I got it finally and managed to push on! :D Anywho, I'm dedicating this chapter specially to ShadowkittyxX! She'll be gone for a week guys D: Therefore this chapter is for her ^_^**

**Now, you all may read~ I hope you enjoy this chapter (: And if there are any mistakes please let me know. I wasn't able to get this on Microsoft office, but I did read over it so hopefully I didn't miss anything. Just let me know please (:**

**Now enjoy~ **

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Dawn: Like My Plan?

Ash let my hand go when we reached the side of the road. Blackberry brambles crowded the bank. As we tried to find a way through, it was every delinquent for herself, apparently.

Out of habit I plucked a few berries and popped them into my mouth. Too late I remembered we were headed for a tryst in the forest together, not playing army with pinecone grenades and brothers. I should not eat before kissing.

But three steps ahead of me, he plucked some berries too. Maybe this afternoon wasn't as strange as I thought. Maybe we really were headed into the trees for a discussion, as I'd suggested. It was innocent after all. Relieved and disappointed, I bit down on the blackberries. Sweet juice filled my mouth.

I picked a few more berries as I passed. Just as my cheeks puffed out to full capacity in mid-chew, Ash found a break through the thicket and up the hill. He turned around and extended his hand to help me.

I froze, staring at him in the thick heat, leaves tickling my legs. Boys did not help girls. Not in my experience, anyway. When I was one of the boys, they tromped ahead of me and never once looked back to see if I was still there, much less, in need of assistance. Boys had helped me only recently, when they wanted something.

No, this walk through the woods would not be innocent.

Taking his hand, I said, "Fank woo."

"Hm," he laughed with his mouth closed.

We crashed through the forest. Since we were sneaking this time together, it seemed like we should have tiptoed along, but there was no way to walk quietly through dry leaves. It also seemed like his brothers and my brother would jump from behind a bush at any second, or that a snake would fall heavily across my shoulders. Once Gary and Paul had told me a story about snakes in the jungle dropping down on people from trees. Then they hid in Ash's tree house with a rubber snake and waited for me to pass by underneath. If I had not been six years old at the time and in perfect health, I would have had a heart attack.

The suspense was too much. We'd walked far enough. We couldn't see the road or the houses that we'd reach if we kept going. The dark trunks of maples and oaks surrounded us, and the late afternoon sun made the green leaves glow overhead. I stopped behind a huge pine - keeping it between me and the road, because it offered extra protection from the prying eyes of boys and parents - and pulled Ash in front of me. "What I wanted to talk to you about was-"

He kissed me. At first he gently touched his lips to mine. The more exciting development was that in order to do this, he'd stepped very close. His chest was an inch from mine. I could feel his heat. He tasted of blackberries - mmm. He leaned even closer and braced his muscular arms on the tree on either side of me.

When he broke the kiss to take a breath, I whispered, "Tree hugger."

He opened his eyes, and gave me this _look._ A combination of amusement and exasperation and hunger. He looked like a teenager making out in the woods. Puzzling through this, I realized that I was gazing at him from the perspective of a six-year-old girl playing army and dodging rubber snakes.

But he _was_ this teenager, and so was I. I felt the same need for him that he felt for me, like a force was drawing me forward into his heat. I just didn't know how to say it.

He cupped my chin with his hand and watched me. He breathed hard through his nose. His shoulders heaved way harder than they should have after a few minutes of kissing. I was about to suggest some additional conditioning exercises before football season started. I opened my mouth to tell him.

He kissed me again. His tongue passed my lips and played across my teeth. We'd only been kissing like this for a week, but it seemed very natural when I kissed him back the same way. My body was on autopilot as I reached blindly for his waist and dragged him even closer, his torso skin-to-skin with mine against the tree. Who _were_ we? I was turning into any of the assorted older girls who'd been seen leaving the cab of Gary's truck at night. I'd always viewed those girls with a mixture of awe and derision. Sexual attraction was funny. Lust was hilarious.

Now, not so much. Those girls had my sympathy, because I totally got it. I ran my fingers lightly up Ash's bare back.

He gasped.

I opened my eyes to see if I'd done something wrong. He still touched the tree, but his muscles were taut, holding on to it for dear life. His eyes were closed. He rubbed his rough cheek slowly against mine. I had done nothing wrong. He was _savoring._

I knew how he felt. Tracing my fingers down his back again, I whispered, "Stubble or what?"

Eyes still closed, he chuckled. "I'm not shaving until our parents let us date again." He kissed my cheek.

"What if it takes...a...while?" I asked, struggling to talk. He'd made his way down to my neck. His tongue circled there slowly. "There are only six or seven weeks until August football practice starts, right?"

"Hm." His mouth moved up my neck, toward my ear. _Oh._

"Will you be able to stuff your beard into your helmet?" I croaked.

In answer, he put his lips on my ear. I forgot the next joke I'd planned to make and lost myself in Ash.

I know this is hard to believe but we had a lot to worry about. My dad was threatening never to let us date again. And we were making out in broad daylight, with birds calling to each other and cicadas buzzing in the trees. We'd watched a lot of movies with our brothers over the years - or I had, and Ash had wandered in and out because he couldn't sit still. We'd made fun of couples who suddenly decided to make out when they'd just escaped from a hoard of alien robots bent on killing them or zombies that would eat them alive. Who could concentrate on kissing in these situations?

Now I understood. Ash kissed his way from my ear to my mouth. He hooked one thumb in the waistband of my shorts. I kissed him harder.

I enjoyed it. _Really _enjoyed it. But in the back of my mind, I worried that if we were gone too long, our parents would find us. And I still hadn't had a private talk with him.

I pushed him away. "We need to go before our parents wise up," I panted.

He came right back for me, regaining his balance and bracing his arms on both sides of me again, caging me in. "I was just getting started," he growled in my ear.

I giggled. I'd never pegged myself as a giggler, but when Ash acted like this I couldn't help it. "Why couldn't you get started last night?"

"I was _sleeping,_" he said haughtily. He went back to my neck. I would have stood there all day and let him do his work. But I couldn't shake the feeling we were running out of time.

"Seriously, Ash, we need to talk while we can." I put my hand on his bare chest and pushed him six inches away.

He gazed down at my hand.

"I was talking to Paul-," I began.

Ash grasped my wrist with two fingers, like he didn't really want to touch it, and removed my hand from his chest.

"-about how rude you were to your mom when she offered to help us," I finished. "Joy had heard about it too. I know you're mad, Ash, but it doesn't make sense for you to dig a deeper hole for both of us."

He scowled down at me. "I'm right and my mother is wrong."

"I know..." I almost called him "baby." _I know, baby._ I caught myself in time. Then I wondered why I'd caught myself. It just seemed foreign for this endearment to come out of my mouth. To Ash. And he would not have appreciated it, anyway. After sixteen years as the baby of the family, he did not consider it a compliment.

"I know," I said again. "But Paul said your mom would help us if we stay apart for a while first. In the meantime, if you can keep from cussing in front of her, I have a plan that might convince my dad to let us date a lot faster."

He put his hand on my shoulder. "You make terrible, terrible plans."

"Hey," I protested. "One of my plans caught you, didn't it?"

"Yeah, but you meant to catch Gary." He took his hands off my shoulder.

I waved his concerns away, along with a cloud of gnats that had found us in the forest. "You're getting lost in the details. Keep the big picture in mind. The plan is, I will find someone to date who is a hundred times worse than you. You will be the lesser of two evils. My dad will see the error of his ways in banning me from dating you, and he'll let us get back together."

Ash nodded.

I nodded with him, grinning. "Good, huh?"

He kept nodding, but his mouth drew into a tight line "This person you want to date. It's Gary."

"Gary!" I exclaimed. Gary hadn't even crossed my mind. "No! I was thinking of Kevin Lee. Do you know him? He's two years older than us, but he was in my driver's ed class last year because he'd flunked twice. I'm pretty sure he didn't graduate, what with prison and all. Anyway, one day last week when you and I were driving to town, I saw him mowing the grass with a work-release crew. Maybe I could even convince him to wear his orange jumpsuit on our date. That would _really _impress my dad. Do you think Kevin would go out with me?"

Ash's hand was over his mouth. But his brown eyes widened with horror. I did not want him horrified. He would be difficult enough to drag into the plan as it was. He needed a warning label that said _DOES NOT TAKE DIRECTION WELL._

I wasn't giving up. The plan was a good one. I could be flexible and change the details until Ash agreed to play along.

"You're probably right," I said. "Forget Kevin. Gary would be easier."

"I knew it!" Ash pointed at me. "You were trying to get Gary this whole time."

I narrowed my eyes at him. "What are you saying? I planned to get Gary, I got you instead, but I was always aiming for Gary, and now I'm going in for the kill?"

"You don't fool me. You _play_ dumb, but you made an _A_ in trig. You're diabolical without even trying."

I folded my arms on my sports bra. "I'm pretty sure that's a contradiction in terms, but remind me to look up 'diabolical' later."

"I won't be able to give you that reminder, Dawn, because we're not allowed to see each other, and you'll be out with Gary."

"What's this business with Gary?" I insisted. "I thought you and Gary worked everything out. I saw you two talking Saturday night."

"Worked everything out? I guess. We agreed that he would not interfere when I tried to get you back, and I would not interfere when he tried to get Misty back."

"Oh." I thought they'd talked about something more meaningful and brotherly, like how Gary had mistreated Ash for sixteen years and how Ash had begun to strike back in a big way. I'd _hoped_ they had, because it would have meant Gary might help Ash and me out for our latest predicament. But this was too much to ask. Before that night, I'd never seen Gary and Ash voluntarily have a talk with each other. Ever.

"Well, fine," I said. "I won't go out with Gary either."

We both jumped when a bird burst from a tree near us and soared away. Ash watched it as it went. I watched Ash. He tracked the bird with his eyes, chin lifted as if he'd regained his dignity. I expected the next thing out of his mouth to be an apology for doubting me.

What he said was, "Who's your next choice? Paul?"

Brilliant! I hardly even registered the sarcasm in Ash's voice. I snapped my fingers. "That's not a bad idea. Paul's three years older than me. He's about to be a sophomore in_ college._ My dad will pass out. He'll be so happy to have me dating a high school junior again! Even if it is you."

"Plus, you and Paul are so familiar with each other anyway, since you've already made out." His brown eyes accused me. This time his sarcasm was hard for me to gloss over.

Exasperated, I put my hands in my hair, which was a mistake because it was up in a ponytail. I only managed more of a tousled, cornered-by-my-boyfriend's-superior-logic look before putting my hands down. "Ash, we did not make out. We kissed once, when I was _eleven._ I should have never told you." I really never would have told him if I'd had any idea he would throw it back in my face. "I am trying to solve this problem for both of us, and all you can do is be unreasonable and furious about everything."

"I don't think it's unreasonable for me to not want you to date my brothers or a freaking convicted felon," Ash said. "What did Kevin get arrested for? Didn't he steal a car?"

"He stole the driver's ed car." I laughed. Then I saw how Ash was looking at me. "He gave it back."

"They _make_ you give stuff back, Dawn, after they arrest you for stealing it."

I opened my mouth to respond. I was going to say something about Kevin passing driver's ed the third time he took it, despite his brush with the law. But now Ash was giving me a look that said, _I know you are not about to defend him. _I closed my mouth.

Ash sighed through his nose, disgusted. "I can't believe you're trying to plan your way out of this. What we do together is none of our parent's goddamn business, and if you try to work around what they say, you're just giving in."

"I'm not. It's a means to an end. You have to think like them, Ash." I poked at my head to signify _thinking. _"Think like a middle-aged man with OCD, a dead wife, and a teenage daughter. Think like a woman with three teenage sons who once ran a golf cart into the side of their granddad's house."

"Paul and Gary shouldn't have let me drive," Ash said in his own defense. "I was seven."

"You shouldn't have_ asked_ to drive. You were seven."

"And I don't see why we just can't run away together."

This idea sounded just as ridiculous now as it had been when he suggested it the first time. But the sentiment behind it - that was very sweet. As we'd argued, Ash had moved several feet away from me across the forest floor, and I'd backed against the tree. When we stood this far apart, it was hard to remember we were arguing because we wanted to be together.

Boosting myself off the tree with one running shoe, I closed the space between us, put my hand on his arm, and stuck out my bottom lip in sympathy. "I'd like to graduate from high school first."

He looked down at my hand on his arm and muttered, "I'm not graduating from high school anyway."

I stepped closer, put my other hand on his arm, and fluttered my eyelashes at him. I was getting good at this, if I did say so myself. "I told you I'd help you in chemistry next year."

Stubbornly he held onto his anger. He didn't touch me. But he didn't back away or shake my hands off his arm, either. He said, "Even if your plan worked and they let us date again, the next time we did something wrong-"

"Why would we ever do anything else wrong? We would be very careful."

"Dawn. This is you we're talking about. And me."

I laughed. "I see your point."

"The next time we did something wrong, they'd just tell us again that we couldn't date."

I stroked my thumbs on his arm. "Not if we convince them that we're meant to be together."

"I'm not sure we are anymore."

I looked down at the diamond and pearl ring that my mother had left to me, which my dad gave me for my birthday yesterday. Of course we were meant to be together. My mother had seen this and as much as told me this before she died. It had just been a matter of seeing this for myself. But if _Ash _didn't believe it anymore...I looked up at him in confusion. "You're not?"

"Not if you're that desperate to go out with Gary."

I pulled my hands off his arm. "So this is what it's about. You're still mad about Gary. What happened to what you told me a few days ago, that you've been in love with me forever?"

_"You've _been in love with _Gary _forever, and you expect me to believe you've switched from him to me in the past week, just like that?"

I'd had enough of this. If he didn't trust me when I said I wanted him and not Gary, what kind of boyfriend was he? I would tell him we should break up, as if my dad hadn't broken us up already. Things would be so much easier this way. We could enjoy the rest of the summer. Our dating ban wouldn't matter anymore, and we could go back to being friends and pretend we'd never gotten together. I hoped. Someday.

And then, something happened. The sunlight filtering through the leaves shifted on his face. He looked different. This boy I'd been staring at in disbelief and deciding to break up with...I knew it was Ash. I was in the middle of an argument with Ash. But in the dim forest light, he didn't look like Ash. He didn't even look like Gary, who was so much like Ash in appearance but was two years older.

This time, as Ash pierced me with this brown eyes and privileged me with the full view of his tanned, muscular chest and the small amount of barely visible stubble - I couldn't quite get over the stubble - he reminded me of the senior football players whom I'd brought water and bandages to with the rest of the girls' tennis team last fall. Boys I'd considered so dreamy and so much older than me that I'd never have a chance with them, so why try?

It occurred to me that August football practice _did _begin in six or seven weeks. School would start a few weeks after that. With Gary a freshman off at college, Ash would be out of his shadow for the first time - the only Ketchum brother left in town. Ash would likely start for the varsity football team. He would get noticed. And he would no longer be my property all day every day like he was during the summer. I would have to share him with the other girls in my high school, including every flirtatious ditz in the lower sections of math, where he always got stuck.

I couldn't break up with him. I couldn't watch him date another girl, or a series of them, for the rest of high school. I would regret it for the rest of my life.

And I couldn't afford to argue with him like this. I had to convince my dad to lift the Ash ban before summer was over. _And _I had to convince Ash the plan was worth it.

Unfortunately, Ash couldn't read my mind. "You know what?" he asked. "Screw this." He turned around on his running shoe and crashed through the fallen leaves, toward the road. He must have thought I had no defense for switching from Gary to him so fast.

I had to fix this. But jogging after him, clinging to his arm, and begging him to be reasonable would not convince him I was a terrific catch myself, one worth all this trouble. So I used a little strategy, joking my way back into his good graces. "You have no right to dis my plan," I called after him. "Your idea of a plan is to grow a beard."

"Hey. It's a lot harder than it looks. I've only been shaving for a year."

Good. He was joking back. That meant my humor was working on him.

Bad. He didn't even call over his shoulder to me. He yelled it facing forward as he stomped through the forest. I could hardly hear him. My humor was not working well enough.

I skipped after him until I caught up. I kept pace beside him, which was difficult. He was much taller than I was, with a longer stride, and he maintained a straight course while I had to dodge around bushes and briars.

"This is good," I panted. "We're both awful actors, as we've established. If we're genuinely angry with each other, we won't have to fake being broken up."

He never slowed down. I practically ran beside him. Branches slapped my face. Acting genuinely angry was getting easier, and I may have forgotten some of my resolve to patch things up with him. "While we're at it," I said, "why don't you call me a bitch like you did a couple of nights ago?"

"Why don't I call you a slut for hooking up with me just to get Gary?" he snapped.

"Why don't I call _you _a slut for hooking up with a different girl every month for the past year?" I yelled at him. "I'll bet your so-called Secret Make-Out Hideout isn't even a secret. You've had your license for three weeks. You probably took Misty there before you took me."

He stopped, finally and have me a shocked look. Ha - he could dish out the jealous accusations, but he couldn't take them.

But I didn't want to one-up Ash. I wanted to be with him and make out with him again, preferably sooner rather than later. "Hey." I reached over to grab his hand.

Before I could touch him, he dodged away and jogged ahead again. We'd reached the edge of the forest. He barreled right through the blackberry brambles and onto the road.

"Ash," I called, determined he wouldn't get away before we could talk this out. I ran after him, hardly noticing the briars scratching my legs. I emerged onto the road in bright sunlight and the full glare of my dad and Joy, who were holding hands.

My first though when I saw them was, _Why are they walking together? _Joy was supposed to be my dad's employee. I was used to seeing them talking, but never touching. Then I remembered Joy had not been my nanny for years, and she and my dad were dating as of yesterday. My second thought was, _Why are they walking in this heat? Nobody in their right mind would be exercising in this heat._

And - by now you are figuring out I am a little slow on the uptake - only my third thought was, _Busted._

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**Author's Notes: Well~ things aren't looking good for Dawn and Ash and in addition to that, they've came across Dawn's dad and Joy. This might not be too good (; but you'll see what goes down in the next chapter. **

**Okay, I have a question~ Whose side are you on? Dawn - agreeing with her plan? Or Ash - disagreeing with the plan. Let me know please guys ^_^ I wanna see what you guys think of their situation.**

**I'm definitely updating this week~ will it be twice? Not sure, I'm gonna try to really focus on Cwohs2's next chapter. Not much left, idea wise, for that chapter, but plenty of writing is needed, so it might be a bit of a longer chapter than expected. So yeah~ most likely will only be one update this week for this story. **

**With that said~ Please review~ ^_^ And answer the question please. I'm really anxious on thoughts xD**

**Bye guys~ _o/**

**- Angel ^o***


	6. Ash: Stay Away From Her

**Author's Notes: _o/ Hola everyone! ^_^ As said, this is the update for this week! I really like this chapter for some reason. xD Hopefully you guys will too :) Hehe, thank you for the wonderful reviews last chapter! :D It was nice to see what you thought about Dawn's place and who you agreed with ;) Thank you!**

**And now I shall stop talking and let you guys enjoy the chapter :)**

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Ash: Stay Away From Her

When I saw Dawn's dad and Joy across the hot asphalt road, I spun around, hoping Dawn was still hidden by the trees.

She stood right behind me, in full view. And if my expression matched hers, we couldn't have looked guiltier.

I turned back around. Her dad's face was even worse. Glaring at me, he worked his jaw like he was going to say something, but he wanted to make sure he'd thought of the worse possible insult first. He turned redder and seemed swell, like all his holes were plugged up and the pressure had nowhere to escape.

He opened his mouth.

"It was my fault," I said quickly.

"I know!" he roared.

At the same time, Dawn stepped in front of me and muttered, "Wrong thing to say, Ash."

"Right." I put my hand on Dawn's shoulder and pushed her an arm's length away so it wouldn't look like I was hiding behind her. "It's nobody's fault, because we didn't do anything wrong."

Her dad brought his hands together and popped a knuckle.

"Trevor," Joy said soothingly, rubbing her hand on his back. But she was looking hard at _me,_ telling me upstanding citizens did not act this way. When we were kids, that look from Joy could make Dawn and her brother behave, and sometimes even my brothers, but I never seemed to get the message.

"I saw you coming out of the woods," Dawn's dad shouted at me. "Together!"

"We weren't rolling around in the leaves or anything. Look, no evidence." I put my other hand on Dawn's shoulder and turned her around backward, hoping she didn't have scratches from the tree on her bare back or bark on her butt.

_"Get your hands off my daughter!"_

Either I jerked away from her at the force of his words, or she started out from under my hands. I wasn't sure which. She and Joy and I stared at Dawn's dad in horror. He was excitable, yes, and he had yelled at me before, yes, but always about safety issues. He thought I was going to set his house on fire with bottle rockets or run my four-wheeler into his car again. When he hollered at me about that stuff, his voice pitched into a whine like a woman.

This was not that voice. This was a full-bodied boom that meant business. He looked and sounded like a big dog defending his territory.

"Here's what you did wrong, Ash," he barked. "I told your parents to make it clear to you that you were not to see Dawn again. You did it anyway. That's what you did wrong."

"But-" I started.

"Shhh," Dawn said beside me.

"That's-" I started again.

"Shut up," Dawn muttered.

"-ridiculous," I finished.

"Ash, stop talking," Dawn said.

"Ash, stop talking," Joy repeated.

I knew I was only getting myself in more trouble. Dawn's dad unballed his fists, daring me to talk back. I was beyond caring. I was right and he was wrong. I said, "Of course I'm going to see her. I live next door."

"Not for long," he shouted. "Dawn, go with Joy. Go home."

I balled my fists then. Now it sounded like _Dawn _was a dog.

Dawn gave me a wide-eyed warning look, then obediently jogged a few steps forward and walked with Joy toward her house.

Her dad turned to me. "You. Follow. Me."

"Woof," I said.

Dawn and Joy both stopped under the trees and looked back at me. We all half expected Dawn's dad to really blow his top this time.

He didn't. His balled fists expanded into claws that wanted to strangle me. Then he turned without a word and headed for my house.

Dawn widened her eyes at me and nodded after her dad, urging me to go on. Joy pointed at him and gave me the stern nanny look.

I followed. But I let him get a good thirty feet ahead of me so he'd worry. That far away, he couldn't hear my footsteps across the pine needles. He kept looking over his shoulder to make sure I hadn't escaped. We continued past my house, all the way down to the marina. He waited for me outside the office door with his arms folded. When I caught up with him, he swung open the office door, ready to feed me to my parents.

But the office was empty. He pointed me inside. I slouched past him and collapsed into my mother's desk chair. I'd been keyed up for a shouting match; I was almost disappointed it was delayed. For a few minutes, anyway.

"Stay." He glared at me a moment more, then closed me inside the office while he went to look for my parents.

I stared at the painted metal door. Gary had drawn a smiley face on it in permanent marker when I was eight and he was ten. He blamed it on me, and Mom believed him. The huge smile in the faded paint never would wash out - believe me, I'd tried. I'd been forced to try. Now it taunted me. Going in the woods with Dawn had been my idea. Going parking with her last night had been my idea, too. I knew that, and yet all my troubles pointed back to Gary.

On impulse, I rolled the chair close to the desk, snagged the phone, and punched in Misty's number. If it hadn't been for Dawn, I could have been into Misty. As it was, I'd only gone out with her last month for the same reason I went out with any girl: to have some fun, but also hoping that Dawn was watching and that she would finally get jealous. I liked Misty, though. I felt bad about using her until she cheated on me with Gary. Afterward, I figured she deserved whatever she got, because of her infidelity and extremely poor taste.

She must have recognized the marina office number on her cell phone and thought it might be Gary, because her voice sounded tight, like she could hardly contain herself. "Hello?"

"It's only me." I hadn't meant to disappoint her.

"Hey, Ash!" she squealed. She didn't want me to feel bad for making her feel bad. Which was cute and all. Misty was a really nice person - most of the time. But if I'd gone into the woods with Misty and then called Dawn, Dawn would have answered with a cackle and a "So, did you get some?" I missed her already.

"Hey," I said. I was lucky Misty answered the phone. Now that I had her, I needed to get what I wanted from her as quickly as I could. Dawn would call her soon for a girl talk about what an idiot I was for not going along with her plan. I had to get Misty on my side now, before my dad came in. "What's up with you and Gary?"

"What do you mean?" she snapped. "Did he say something about me?"

Just as I'd suspected. "He didn't say a word," I admitted.

She let out a little huff of frustration. "Then why do you think there's something up between us?"

"Not _between_ you," I said. "It's all one-sided. You got mad at him and broke up with him last week. He came groveling back to you but you blew him off. You expected him to crawl back again. He hasn't. He talked to you at the festival yesterday but he didn't ask you out. Am I right?"

"Well." Her voice pitched even higher as she got upset. "I broke up with him because it seemed like he only wanted to date me to make you mad. After we broke up, I thought he would take a few days and realize how wrong he'd been, and then he'd beg to have me back and he'd appreciate me more. I never thought I would break up with him and he would shrug and say, 'Okay'!"

"I can tell," I said. "You pranced around in your bikini at the lake this afternoon and he _still _didn't ask you out. He is not acting like the boys you've dated before at _all._"

"You can lose the superior tone, Ash Ketchum," she said sternly. "The last boy I dated before Gary was you." She paused. "Of course, you only asked me out to make Dawn jealous."

I laughed. Not a desperate-about-my-girlfriend laugh, but a cavalier laugh like Gary's I felt ill. "That's why I'm calling you."

"You want to make Dawn jealous again?" Misty guessed. "The two of you have enough problems."

"Tell me about it." The sick feeling grew. I winced at another of those pangs in my stomach, just like this morning when I found out I was banned from Dawn. Then I said, "Dawn still likes Gary."

"She does not!" Misty squealed. I heard her swallow. She said more calmly. "She does not, Ash. She likes you. You should have heard her talking about you on the boat this afternoon."

_You should have heard her talking about Gary in the woods,_ I thought. "Here's the thing. She's forming this plan-"

"Uh-oh," Misty said.

"- to date other guys until I don't look so awful to her dad."

"But she's not dating _Gary,_" Misty said.

"Not yet," I admitted. "But she will. If this goes on long enough, I promise you she will."

"I don't believe it," Misty. "And even if I did-"

I had her.

"- what could I do about it?"

"Nothing yet," I said. "But when the time comes, I want you to be prepared. I may ask you to do something that would help me keep Dawn interested or send Gary your way." I felt guilty as I said this. Gary and I _had_ promised to stay out of each other's way when it came to Dawn and Misty.

I talked myself out of it. I could count on one hand the number of promises to me that Gary had kept.

In fact, upon further reflection, I couldn't think of a single one.

"I don't know," Misty said. "Dawn and I haven't been friends very long. I wouldn't feel right, going behind her back like that."

"She'll forgive you," I said. "She's very forgiving. And you'd be doing her good. You want to keep her away from Gary don't you? He's bad news."

Misty giggled. She'd always giggled at pretty much everything I said - another thing I liked about her. She was easy to please. This went a long way toward explaining her infatuation with Gary. I chuckled along with her, even though I was dead serious.

She quieted down and asked, "You think I'm an idiot for liking him, don't you?"

"No. I think you have the same taste as every other girl at our high school. I don't understand that big belt over the long shirt, either."

"It's called a tunic."

"It's called ugly. And one more thing."

She sighed. "What?"

"Don't tell Dawn you've been to my secret make-out hideout. If she asks you about it, tell her that you and I never went there."

"Why would she care?" Misty asked. "You and I went there when _we _were dating, before you and Dawn got together."

"Yeah, but she thinks she was the first, and I didn't tell her otherwise."

Misty was quiet for a few moments. In the background I could hear her three older sisters yelling at each other about something. If she was trying to figure out how boys' minds worked, she was way out of her element. She was no Dawn.

Finally she said, "I don't want to lie to her. Like I told you, she and I haven't been friends very lo-"

I interrupted her before she went any farther down that high-and-mighty path. Time to play the sympathy card, which never worked on Dawn but was a sure thing with every other girl I knew. "Dawn and I are going through a tough time right now. You would be helping, not hurting. Please help me, Misty."

"It just doesn't make any sense," she said weakly. "I thought you _did _want to make her jealous. If you want me to conceal from her that I've been to your hideout, it sounds like you _don't _want to make her jealous."

"I don't want to make her jealous _yet,_" I explained. "She hasn't gone out with Gary _yet._ Right now I want her to feel special, like she's the only girl I ever introduced to my secret make-out hideout. It's only after she goes out with Gary that I'm going to pull the rug out from under her."

"Ash Ketchum," Misty said. "I had no idea you were so sneaky."

"Right. That makes me even sneakier. Deal?"

We hung up, and I felt guilty all over again. I _was_ worried about Dawn going out with Gary, but I was actually more worried Dawn would discover she wasn't the first to experience the secret make-out hideout. I wished she _had_ been the first and I've never taken Misty there. I didn't want to see Dawn's face when she found out otherwise.

I could have admitted this to Misty. Maybe I should have. But I didn't trust her after she'd cheated on me with Gary.

Of course, she was right that I'd only gone out with her to make Dawn jealous. She had no reason to trust me, either. We made perfect partners in crime.

Suddenly I realized how tense I was, leaning forward and gripping the edge of the metal desk with both hands. I leaned back in the chair. This didn't relax me any. I found myself staring up at the bulletin board over the desk. Tacked to it were business cards for boat sales and reps, a diagram of an F/A-18 Hornet that Paul had drawn when he was about ten (and I thought he was so impossibly old), the schedule for everybody who worked at the marina (Dawn was under Gary, I noticed with annoyance), and a brochure for a military boarding school. I'd almost forgotten my parents were thinking about sending me away.

I'd told Dawn's dad he couldn't keep me from seeing Dawn because I lived next door. When he'd said, "Not for long," that's what he must have meant. That's what he was talking to my parents about right now.

They wouldn't do that to me. Would they?

No, they wouldn't. Not yet. Not just because Dawn's dad told them to.

But the threat was there. Last year when I was flunking chemistry, my mom started investigating schools. She'd asked Dawn's dad about it because he had a fraternity brother who'd gone to one, and who might be able to get me into a good one for those of us with ADHD, instead of one full of actual juvenile delinquents. This was my mother's fear - that if she sent me away to clean up my act, I'd actually become more corrupted and learn to pick locks better. It was all the same to me. Prison was prison.

I'd brought up my chemistry grade by the end of the semester, though. I hadn't improved my test scores, but the longer the class went on, the more our grade was based on lab. I was _excellent _at lab. Unlike every nerdy girl in the class and half the guys, I was not afraid of the Bunsen burner.

I'd worked my ass off for that C, all for nothing.

This office had no windows.

I jumped from the tiny chair, kicked open the door and escaped from my cell.

Around the side of the warehouse, I fished my football out of the bushes. I jogged about ten yards up the boat ramp, aimed carefully, and fired a pass at one of the huge metal doors.

_BANG._

Bull's-eye. I ran after the ball and stopped it before it rolled into the yard and down the hill into the lake. I jogged back up the ramp with it and let another pass fly.

_BANG. _

If Dawn's dad had found my parents in the warehouse and they were looking for me now, the noise would notify them of my whereabouts. I didn't care. The more passes I threw, the better I felt.

_BANG._

"Ash!" my dad roared. The sun was setting now. From where I stood on the ramp, the corner of the warehouse appeared to cut the huge orange sun exactly in half. My dad walked toward me out of that orange glow, like the devil. He hiked up the ramp and stopped near me.

I can't repeat in mixed company any of what he said to me. However, I can convey the general import of the message by replacing the word I shouldn't have said in front of my mother with the word "monkey." I hate monkeys.

"Son," he said, "you monkeyed up."

"I know." I put off the rest of this conversation by running after the football again. But when I returned to my starting spot, he was still there.

"Now, I'm not going to send you to military school just because Trevor has his panties in a wad."

"Thanks," I said.

_BANG._

He raised his voice. "But the reason I _will _send you is the reason your mom and I were discussing it in the first place. You have absolutely no monkeying self-control. None."

"Thanks for nothing." I ran down the ramp to retrieve my football.

"That's a prime monkeying example," he shouted after me. "You're in trouble and you're still talking back. People like you end up in _jail, _son. Nobody is going to help you out then. Trevor's already so mad at you, and I'm not wasting my boat money paying for a lawyer to defend you for a crime you're likely guilty of anyway."

I walked back up the ramp, tossing the football from hand to hand. I tucked it under one arm and slapped my dad on the back. "Your confidence is heartwarming. Makes me want to return all the money I stole from little old ladies and kick the drugs."

He gave me the same look he'd sent my way that morning in the kitchen. I had gone too far.

I raised both hands and one football. I had no defense and nothing else to say.

"Why can't you stay the monkey away from her?" he burst.

"Because." This was impossible to explain. I didn't understand it myself. I put my hands down in defeat. "It's Dawn."

"I know," he said. Shockingly, he sounded halfway sympathetic.

"And she's beautiful," I went on.

He nodded.

I pointed the football through the trees, toward her house. "And she's _right there!"_

"I know, son, and it's going to earn you a tour through Kanto's finest secondary schools for monkey-ups."

I bounced the football on the side of my head in frustration. "What do you want me to do?"

He pursed his lips and eyed me in the dusk. "Show me you have one iota of self-restraint."

"I will," I said quickly.

"Stay away from her."

"Okay."

"Keep your hands off her."

"I'll try."

He scowled at me.

"I will," I said.

He wiggled his fingers at me. "And it might help public relations with Dawn's dad if you put on a shirt and quit walking around here like sex on a stick."

I rolled my eyes. He did make me feel self-conscious about my bare chest, though. I wanted to fold my arms. Instead, I threw the football as hard as I could at the warehouse door.

_BANG._

"Nice arm," Dad called after me as I chased the football. "Ever thought about throwing against the rock wall of the house? You're making a dent in my door."

That was the point. I liked making a dent. I liked watching it grow bigger with every throw. I didn't say this though. As I walked toward him, spinning the football on one finger, I did admit, "The metal makes a more satisfying noise. Like fireworks. I can feel it in my chest."

He reached out and stroked my cheek with his fist. "What's this scrub you're working on?"

I batted his hand away. "The apple doesn't fall far from the tree." I yanked his small beard.

He feinted toward me.

I bounced the football off his chest and caught it again. "I could so take you, old man."

He chuckled and headed past me, up to the house. "You do what I said," he called over his shoulder.

"I will."

"I would hate to see you go."

I watched him walk all the way up the yard, hands on his knees when he got to the steepest part, until he disappeared into the house.

Then I looked toward Dawn's house again. It was big, but all I could see between the thick trunks was wooden corners and lights. It looked exactly like it always had from over here, but I felt so much different about it now.

In my earliest memory it was a scary place, because Dawn and Green's mother had died. Later it was a mysterious and wonderful place. I didn't go to their house often, but when I did, Green's room was full of model airplanes _still intact_ because he had no older brothers to break them on purpose, and Dawn was liable to pop around the corner, treating me to a little thrill.

Lately I'd hardly dared go over there because I was sure Dawn would know I liked her. When I did have an excuse to visit Green, I walked through the halls holding my breath. The little thrill had grown into something much stronger, something that made me want to steal Dawn away from Green and get her alone. And now...

Now I just hoped she hadn't gotten in too much trouble.

Keep my hands of her. Right. I waved fireflies away from my face and threw the football at the warehouse as hard as I could.

_BANG._

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**Author's Notes: And that's the end! :) I hope you all enjoyed reading~ Like I said, it's something about this chapter that I like so much xD Anyway, I'll be updating again next week. :)**

**Please leave a review ^_^ **

**- Angel _o/**


	7. Dawn: Business Lunch

**Author's Notes: _o/ Hi everyone~ I'm waaaay late to update. Sorry about that guys! I have no excuse for it..so, be mad at me if you want xD. At least the chapter's here now :)**

**Hehe, thank you everyone for the reviews last chapter~ ^_^ I hope you enjoy this one. It's much shorter than the other ones. Honestly, not much here..but you'll see when you read :)**

**Enjoy~ **

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Dawn: Business Lunch

As the doorbell rang, I was dumping potato chips into a bowl. This was something one did when having one's friends over for lunch. This was, in fact, the only thing I could think of that one did when hostessing a lunch.

At the sound of the bell, I glanced toward the door and tried to slow my pulse. It was not Ash, miraculously freed from the wrath of his parents (and my dad). It was May and Misty, who'd agreed to come over again today to help me figure out what to do. They were conniving, like all girls but me. I figured they could troubleshoot.

"Heeey," I wailed.

May and Misty made unfamiliar girly noises of sympathy and wrapped me in a group hug. "Oh, no!" Misty exclaimed. "Have you been crying?"

"I'm all cried out." My voice was muffled against May's T-shirt - which was safe from stains, because I never wore makeup to work. I wished I could have enjoyed the group hug and taken them up on the implicit invitation to cry my eyes out all over again. This was why they'd driven out here on my lunch break. This was what girls did.

But I really had depleted my store of tears, and probably lost five pounds of water weight in the process, while dusting the marina showroom with Gary this morning. Plus, weird as it had been to show my emotional side to Gary, it would have been even stranger to cry in front of my brother, who would be back any second. Now that he and May were together, I supposed he would listen in on all my girly confabs. Not that I'd ever had any of those before.

Plus, now that I'd rid myself of the initial hysteria at getting Ash in even more trouble, I couldn't concentrate on crying. I was thinking too hard about my plan for getting us out of this mess.

The girls and I detangled ourselves from one another and stepped into the kitchen, shutting the door on the midday heat. "It's so romantic," Misty said. "Like _Romeo and Juliet!"_

"Romantic, no," I said. "Like _Romeo and Juliet,_ yes, except that it's real. With suckage."

"Give us the scoop." May slid into a chair in front of the bread and sandwich meat piled on the kitchen table. "Did your dad convince Ash's parents to punish him?" She glanced around the kitchen as she said this. I knew she wasn't as interested in the scoop on Ash as the scoop on my brother's whereabouts.

"I don't know yet," I said. "Drew's supposed to be down at the gas pumps, finding out from Ash right now. I worked with Gary and Paul this morning, but neither of them knew anything. They weren't around when Ash got in trouble. They asked him later what happened, and he told them to screw off."

"Poor thing." Misty, who was still standing next to me, slipped her arm around my waist.

I shot a sideways look at her. "Poor thing" was right. I felt awful for Ash. But I didn't necessarily want _Misty _feeling awful for him - not when she'd been dating him two weeks ago. I was not schooled enough in the arts of girls to know whether she was bullshitting me or not. I was about to call her on it when Drew walked in.

"Sup, Misty," he said. "Hey, May," he said in a different tone. He stepped over to the kitchen table and kissed her. At first I thought this was going to be a simple peck. But no. This turned into something more. They kissed quite deeply in the middle of a kitchen.

Misty and I looked at each other. She removed her arm from around my waist. I walked to the table, picked up a fork, and dinged it on a glass. "Hello, no PDA in the business meeting. We are here to rescue my love life, not to advance yours."

They broke apart, glaring at me.

We all sat down, and I passed around ingredients for them to make their own sandwiches. All three of them shot me strange looks every time I passed something new. Perhaps other girls actually made lunch when they invited people over? Then I followed their gazes to the jars on the table. I hadn't been handing around condiments you'd usually put on a sandwich. I'd just cleared out the door of the refrigerator and plunked the contents on the table, thinking this stuff must be good for_ something, _though I'd never seen anyone use it.

I picked up a Mason jar with green oozing down the sides and showed it to my brother. "Look, this is from five years ago when Joy was our nanny, not our dad's squeeze. Remember the organic muscadine chutney? Ah, memories." I hugged it to my cheek. Shocked by the cold (and the stick), I plunked it onto the table again. "Sometimes it's good to let go."

With her finger wrapped safely in a napkin, Misty eased the jar a few inches farther from her plate. "Could I have a knife?"

"I'm not even sure if a knife will help you get into that jar," I said. "It's pretty ol-"

"For the mayo," Misty said.

Realizing I had supplied no utensils for the grand repast, I jumped up, crossed the kitchen, and opened what I thought was the knife drawer. Clearly I had not prepared food in a while. This was a drawer full of kitchen tools we had no use for when Joy was not around, such as the avocado slicer, the garlic press, and the melon baller. I'd had a lot of fun cooking with Joy back in the day. She thought she was teaching me to cook, which made her happy. I mashed food like it was Play-Doh and learned nothing, which made me equally happy.

I grabbed a few implements in case someone needed them, sat back down, and handed Misty a butter knife. Then I asked my brother, "What'd you find out about Ash?"

"Well," he said between bites, "there's some talk of military school."

"What!" I shouted. "Ash would be the worst person in the world to go to military school."

"I think that's the idea," my brother said. "You go into military school because you're undisciplined and unmilitary. They make you toe the line."

I felt like my insides had been scooped out with the melon baller in front of me. Ash did not toe the line. That was why he was in so much trouble. But that was also one of the things I loved about him. A disciplined and military Ash would not be a new and improved Ash. It would not be Ash at all.

"But they're not sending him yet," Drew went on. "They've talked about it before, and this latest problem" - he glanced at me, as if I was the problem - "has brought up the discussion again. They won't send him if he stays way from you."

"They're saying, 'Stay away from your girlfriend or we'll send you to military school'?" I asked. "That makes no sense."

"It's more like they're saying, 'We gave you simple instructions and you couldn't follow them.'"

I threw a potato chip at my brother. May and Misty ducked, as if people did not throw food at their tables. "You don't have to act so smug about it," I said. "You helped him polish the marks out of the boat faster. You sent him in my direction."

"Isn't the issue really that your parents are watching you all the time?" May asked. "You could both quit the marina and get jobs at the same place somewhere else."

I frowned at her. I hadn't thought of this. If I got a job on land, I might dry up. I couldn't imagine a summer away from the lake. But to save Ash from military school, it would be more than worth it. I asked, "Like where?"

"You both have your lifeguard certification," May said. "You could work at the city pool or the country club."

"Yeah!" I exclaimed. Work _and _water!

Misty shook her head. "Ash wouldn't be able to stay still in that lifeguard chair for more than five minutes."

"Yeah," I said. She knew this because she'd dated Ash. However, I did not want to be reminded of this at the present time. Waving away May's amateurish idea, I said, "I already wanted to talk to you guys about this, but military school makes it even more important. Ash won't follow orders from his parents. There's my irresistable beauty and allure-"

May laughed.

"-shut up, and then there's the very idea of his parents telling him he can't do something. It's a perfect storm for Ash to self-destruct. I need to get us out of this mess before that happens. And I have a plan." I exclaimed my ingenious plan with Kevin, ignoring Misty when she choked on her lemonade at several points. I finished, "Isn't that a good plan?"

"No," Drew spoke up, "but it's consistent."

I went on. "The problem with this plan-"

_"The _problem?" May asked. "Like there's only one?"

"-is that I ran it by Ash, and he does not like it."

"You have got to be kidding," Drew said flatly.

"It's the Kevin aspect. Ash doesn't want me dating a felon." Or his brother, or his other brother. "It could still work if I thought of someone who passed muster with Ash and horrified my dad at the same time."

"What about Kenny?" Misty asked. "Your dad must know him by reputation. Everybody in town's heard that he made out with three different girls in the food court at the mall and all their boyfriends tried to jump him in the parking lot."

"That's _perfect!" _I pounded my fist on the table. Misty's lemonade sloshed over the side of her glass. "Sorry." I stood up to snag a towel.

"I was joking," Misty said.

My brother warned her, "Do not make jokes to Dawn that you don't want to be misunderstood and taken seriously."

"Why is Kenny perfect?" May asked. "He's a playboy who lives on the edge. Why would that be so scary to your dad? He sounds like a combination of Gary and Ash."

"Yes, but he's from Hoenn," I pointed out as I wiped up the lemonade at Misty's place - or tried to, and ended up scooting the puddle into her lap. "Sorry. Maybe you should do this." I handed her the towel and sat back down in my place. "You know how people around here feel about Hoenn. You don't even have to explain that anything from Hoenn is more intense. If you wreck your car and people want to know how badly you were hurt, all you have to say is, 'The ambulance took me straight to Hoenn,' and everybody knows you went to the university hospital because you were at death's door. If you're going on a date and you say, 'We went to Hoenn,' people know your boyfriend took you to the fanciest restaurant in the state because he's trying to get in your pants."

Drew cleared his throat. Next to him, May took a huge bite of her sandwich. He must be taking her on a date to Hoenn sometime soon.

To cover his own embarrassment - or just to make sure he understood my plan, but I doubted this - my brother reached behind him and snagged a pad and pen on the counter beside the phone. He drew a little diagram. "So an ADHD boyfriend is bad, and a playboy ADHD boyfriend would be worse, but a playboy ADHD boyfriend from Hoenn is the top of this hierarchy."

"That's what I'm counting on," I said. "I would not rely on Kenny's reputation alone. I would go out with him on a couple of dates, enough to let Dad know we're getting serious, and then stage a Teen Crisis."

Everybody cracked up but me. May asked, "What kind of Teen Crisis?"

"I have no idea," I said defensively. "You've been watching MTV longer than I have."

"Are you just going to flirt with Kenny and win him over," Misty asked, "or are you going to explain to him what you're doing?"

"I'll explain to him what I'm doing," I said. "Otherwise I would feel awful. What if he fell for me for real?"

May and Misty looked at each other.

"It is not beyond the realm of possibility," I grouched.

"What makes you think he'll do it?" May asked.

"I'll offer him something in return. I'll take him around town, introduce him to people, show him where we hang out. I will leave out the part where I am extremely unpopular and kind of socially challenged. Do you think he might believe I'm popular?"

"Depends on how long you're together," Misty said. "He'll wise up eventually."

My brother tapped the pen on the pad. "Won't you feel guilty for lying to Dad?"

I _did _feel a twinge of guilt at that, but anger took over. "I won't be lying to him. I _will _be going out with Kenny. I might not be going out with him with romantic intentions, but I will not say I am. Dad will only infer this, and everybody knows you should not infer anything. You should get it in writing."

All this lawyer lingo reminded me that my brother was leaving behind incriminating evidence. I reached across the table, snatched the pad in front of him, and tore out the sheet where he'd made little notes about the plan. I tore out the sheet under that, too, in case the imprint of the pen was clear enough to show up if a paranoid father rubbed a pencil across it. I tore both sheets into a pile of tiny pieces while the three of them watched me as if I had completely lost my mind.

"The thing is," I said, trying to sound sane, "I need to explain all of this to Ash in private. I can't get Drew to explain it to him. Something will be lost in the translation."

"Well, excuse me that I can't look at him all googly-eyed," my brother said.

"And he's liable to punch you," I said.

"Very true," Misty agreed. I felt another twinge of annoyance that she knew Ash so well, or thought she did. That's one of the reasons I'd asked her to help me plan, but the more helpful she was, the less sure I was that I wanted her help.

My brother's eyes slid to May for a fraction of a second, then back to me. He said, "Punch me? He can try."

"Right." I needed to keep my brother on my side. Best to support his machismo in front of May. But he knew, and I knew that asking Kenny to help me and scaring my dad with Kenny would not be nearly as difficult as persuading Ash to play along.

* * *

**Author's Notes: And finished~ So what did you guys think? ^_^ Not much, like I said. Just a little more insight on Dawn's 'great' plan. **

**I'll update again next week, sometime. Seriously, this time xD**

**In the mean time, please _please_ review ^_^**

**- Angel _o/**


	8. Ash: Staking not Stalking!

**Author's Notes: Hi guys! It's been a while, I know. The reason for that is because honestly I've lost interest in writing as well as reading them..But do not worry, I'm slowly getting some interest back. I have a lot of reading to do and a lot of writing to do. But I think it will take some time for me to /really/ get my interest back, so just bear with me :) I'm trying!**

**Other than that, I don't have much to say except enjoy this chapter! :) It's much longer than the others xD This /is/ the longest chapter so far for this story, so I hope you all enjoy reading this one! :)**

* * *

Ash: Staking not Stalking!

Friday night, my family had Dawn's family over for dinner. My mom tried to pass it off as a routine. She said we'd been so busy that we hadn't invited them yet this summer, and now was as good a time as any. However, I was pretty sure she wanted to repair whatever I'd messed up with Dawn's dad. Sooner or later somebody would get another speeding ticket, and then what would my parents do? _Pay _for a lawyer?

I thought I would be glad for the chance to get close to Dawn. It ended up being three courses of frustration. I'd felt exactly this way wakeboarding with her an hour before. I always looked forward to being near her, but when the time came, we were both scared to exchange more than a "hi" for fear authority was watching us.

Even worse, the longer this went on, the more shy I felt around her. Not shy, exactly - I was not shy, and Dawn was so friendly that nobody could feel shy around her. It was more like I wanted to impress her as her boyfriend, and for about two days I'd felt confident I could do it. Now, I was regressing back to the way I'd felt ever since I could remember, knowing I liked her more than she liked me, and deathly afraid to make a move for fear of messing things up with her. Or getting sent to military school.

So when she grinned and put up her arms to slide past me in the narrow space between the refrigerator and the island in the kitchen, I didn't even put out a finger to stroke the strip of exposed skin between the hem of her tank top and the waistband of my jeans she'd cut off into shorts, with her pink bikini bottoms peeking out. I just looked longingly after her and took my second helping of food back to the table.

But after dinner, I got another chance.

"Run down the hill," Gary said. "Hurdle the cooler. Get sprayed by the hose. Swing on the rope. Catch the ball."

"Agreed," Paul said. "One, two, three..."

"Break!" the five of us shouted, raising our hands from the pile in the center. I walked to the end of the dock, where I had a clear shot to pass the football to whoever swung over the lake on the rope hanging from a branch of the enormous oak tree. Dawn followed me, dragging the garden house. I was a little surprised her dad didn't complain about this, because she'd stripped off her tank top and shorts to reveal her pink bikini underneath. Gary and Green wandered over to sit with my parents and Dawn's dad and Joy under the tree. Paul hiked up the yard to get a running start.

"Oh, God," Dawn said without looking at me, "what are they thinking, leaving the two of us alone out here on the dock together? We might _talk_ or something."

"That would be awful," I said. "I might give you hickey."

She laughed, still watching for Paul's start instead of looking at me. "Just by talking to me?"

"I can talk really dirty. You'd be surprised."

She turned red. I hoped her dad couldn't see her blush from that distance. My mom had cracked open a bottle of champagne to celebrate him finally asking out Joy. Maybe that would put him in a better mood about the Ketchum boy next door making his daughter blush.

"How do you like Joy dating your dad?" I asked.

"I was excited about the possibility of getting a new mother, until she started acting like one."

"Oh."

"Speaking of bizarre dates," Dawn said, "I've been meaning to tell you something all week."

She was done with me. She was dating someone else. Maybe that's why I'd turned shy around her the past few days. I'd been afraid of this, and I didn't want to hear it.

Before she could spill to me, I said, "Here he comes." Paul barreled down the grassy hill. He leaped over the big cooler. Dawn gripped the trigger on the hose and released the pressure that had been building up, catching him in the side of the face with a hard stream even from thirty feet away. He put up both hands to block the water and tripped over his own feet, nearly falling as the grass gave way to the sandy beach.

"Good shot," I told her.

"Tomorrow night I'm going out with Kenny."

Paul jumped onto the rope. His momentum carried him far out over the lake. My stomach felt like it was going with him, swinging over a bottomless pit.

I waited for the precise moment to power the football out to him. He let go of the rope at the apex of his swing just as the ball hit him in the chest. He reached his arms around it a fraction of a second too late. The ball bounced off him and plopped into the lake at the same time he did.

Everyone made disappointed noises. Only Joy clapped for him, and when he surfaced, she called through cupped hands, "Good try, Paul." Joy had always employed positive reinforcement with kids, which is why my family found her so weird.

I took advantage of the commotion. Still watching Paul floundering in the water, I asked Dawn, "You're breaking up with me?" If I'd been looking into her blue eyes as I asked this, I probably would have broken down. As it was, only my voice broke. I hoped the splashing covered it up.

"No, of course not!" She moved her hand toward me like she would touch me, but stopped herself in time. Her hand stayed there in the hot air between us. "I'm going ahead with my plan to date boys more insidious than you." Her hand flexed, fingers splayed, hoping I would hold off until she finished. I wondered what she thought I would do.

"I figured Kenny wasn't as bad as Kevin," she went on, "because he has not been to jail. Yet."

Paul waded out of the water and tossed the ball back to me. I dried it on my shirt. Ever since my dad made the "sex on a stick" comment, I'd been careful not to expose my chest, even when boarding and swimming. Gary told me I was getting a farmer's tan.

I realized too late that I was exposing my stomach as I dried my shirt. Dawn watched. I glanced toward the oak tree, but her dad was leaning forward, talking to Joy with his hand on her knee. We had fallen into a parallel universe where people who never touched each other were suddenly in love, and people who were in love weren't allowed to touch each other.

Nobody paid attention to Dawn and me anyway. Green ran down the hill. Swiftly, he jumped over the cooler. Dawn squeezed the trigger on the hose. He'd turned away so the water didn't catch him in the face. She sprayed him in the back of the neck, droplets of water shooting out in all directions like an explosion. He ran that way with his face averted until he hit the beach, then caught the rope and swung out over the water, a lot farther than Paul had gone.

I waited until the perfect moment to fire the ball at him. We made it look easy. He caught it and dropped into the water in an enormous cannonball.

Everyone cheered for him. He surfaced triumphantly and tossed the wet ball back to me.

"Great arm!" my dad yelled. He toasted me with his champagne flute.

"There's no way they'll start him on the varsity team," Gary called as he moved from the shade of the tree up the hill to take his turn. "Ash won't remember the plays. He won't even remember what team they're playing. You can't have a quarterback with ADHD."

"We'll see," I yelled back. _You asshole, _I thought. Then I turned to Dawn. "I can't believe you're going ahead with this plan after I asked you not to."

"Face forward and do not look at me."

I didn't like people telling me what to do, even Dawn. But in this case, she was right. I faced forward and stared out over the lake. In the hot evening with most boats docked for the night, the surface was glassy, reflecting the sunset. No one would have suspected millions of critters living underneath, churning the water with their complex lives. Just like no one would have looked at Dawn and me then, standing side by side on the dock with a football and garden hose, and thought we were discussing our whole future together.

"This is exactly why I'm going ahead with this plan," she said. "We've hardly exchanged two words since Sunday night. Now it's Friday and we have no indication that my dad will give in any time soon. Your parents have threatened you with military school. We have to do something. So I asked out Kenny for tomorrow night. He knows it's a favor. We're only going to the movies. I'll pick him up at his grandparents' house around six thirty-"

"You're picking him up?" I asked. "In what, a boat?"

"No, silly, in my dad's car. I got my license."

"You _did?"_ I couldn't help exclaiming.

My dad looked up from his conversation with my mom and eyed me.

"Yes!" Dawn said. "I'm sorry I forgot to tell you, with everything else going on. Actually I didn't tell you because I wasn't allowed to speak to you. Whatever."

I should have felt happy for her getting her license. The day I got my license a month ago was one of the happiest days of my life, second only to Dawn's birthday a week ago, when we'd gotten together. On my own birthday, I'd dumped my dad out of my truck at the marina and driven all over town for hours by myself.

But I didn't feel happy for her. I felt jealous. "I wanted to be the one to take you to get your license."

She nodded. "I know. I'm sorry. I would have loved to take my street test in your pink truck, but I didn't know when my dad would let me see you again, and I didn't want to wait forever. Gary drove me."

I looked at her. I knew my dad was watching us, and I didn't care. A soft breeze blew the blue hair around her face into her eyes. With both hands, she gathered all her hair into a ponytail in back, twisted it, and pulled it forward over on shoulder. I wished she would magically produce a clip from her bikini bottoms and pin it up. All of this would have been so much easier if I had an ugly girlfriend.

I knew she felt guilty when she went on. "My dad had a big case this week, and of course Joy was keeping some kids. I begged your mom to let somebody off from the marina - anybody. Finally she said Gary could take me because he was just hanging around the showroom and hitting on customers anyway."

I thought, _Better them than you. _I looked angrily toward Gary.

He stood on the grass with his hands on his hips, surveying the course. He didn't want Green to show him up. "Green and Paul wet the grass when they came out of the lake," he complained. "It will be slippery.

"Oh, come on!" I hollered.

At the same time, Paul yelled, "Pussy!" and quickly covered his mouth, looking around stealthily in the hope that Mom wouldn't know who'd said it.

"Teams don't get extra points for field conditions," Dawn pointed out. "Take it like a man."

"Best two of three," Green suggested.

These words weren't even out of Green's mouth when Gary started forward, hoping he'd catch Dawn off guard and avoid the hose. He hurdled over the cooler neatly and ran face-first into her stream of water.

"Good one," I told her.

He continued blindly down the yard, caught the rope, and swung over the lake. I threw the ball. He grabbed at it and missed, dropping into the lake empty-handed.

Everyone moaned.

He surfaced, spluttering, and pointed at me. "You were high."

I called, "You _are_ high if you think that was high." Actually it _had_ been a bit high, because I'd aimed for his head.

"My turn," Dawn said. "Who's manning the hose?"

"I will," Gary said. He walked toward her with his hands out.

She squirted him, a hard spurt in his belly button.

"Oh," he cried, doubling over. "You'll pay for that." He hopped up onto the dock.

"Will I?" she asked, handing over the hose.

It was a good thing I trusted her. Otherwise I might think she was flirting with him.

He slapped me on the back. "You should have seen her taking her driving test. I fastened my seatbelt and took all the sofa cushions with me just in case-"

"You did not." Dawn poked him in the ribs. Grrrr.

"But you knew your left from your right?" I asked, because I wanted to know, and because I wanted to distract her and stop her from touching Gary.

"I sat in the backseat," Gary said. "When the tester told her to turn right, I tapped on the right side of her seat. When the tester told her to turn left, I tapped on the window."

This was very kind of Gary. I wanted to kill him.

Dawn laughed along with him, but she kept her eyes on me. "I didn't believe you, Gary. I wouldn't put it past you to steer me wrong just for fun."

"Who, me?" He tried to squirt Mom all the way across the lawn with the garden hose.

"I used a trick Ash taught me. I put the fingers of my left hand in the shape of an _L _on the steering wheel."

"But why are you driving on the date with Kenny tomorrow night?" I asked. "Why can't Kenny drive you? I was hoping your first date driving would be with me." Now I sounded selfish and I knew it, but I couldn't help it.

Dawn nodded. "I thought about that. My dad knows I've been waiting for my license. If Kenny drove instead, my dad might figure out this is all a set-up."

"Dawn, he's going to know it's all a set-up anyway."

"He isn't. Look at me."

It was a testament to how much I'd missed her that I breathed a little faster just from looking deep into her blue eyes. For a second my asshole brother wasn't standing right next to us and our nosy parents weren't watching us. Dawn and I stood alone together on the dock, as we had a thousand times before, when it didn't matter.

"I'm clueless," she said. "Right?"

"Right." I wasn't going to lie to her. She wasn't dumb, but the way she acted, you'd have to know her since birth or look at her SAT scores to figure this out.

"Well, I inherited it from somewhere." She turned her back on me. I watched her go, staring at her tanned back and her perfect ass in that pink bikini. She passed Gary, walked up the dock, and continued through the grass to the starting place for the obstacle course.

I hadn't run the course yet - I would take my turn last because I was always the most likely to get hurt - but I felt like I'd run it already, the way my heart pounded.

Gary gave up trying to squirt Mom with the hose. He held it almost straight up, adjusting the stream for the slight breeze. The water cascaded on top of my head before descending down to earth.

I didn't even hit him. For one thing, I was used to Gary. For another, my dad had warned me to display one iota of self-control. This was more than an iota. The cold water soaked my hair and splashed onto my T-shirt.

As if it were perfectly normal for him to annoy me for no apparent reason, which I supposed it was, I asked him, "Are you going out with Misty tomorrow?" I didn't expect him to say yes. If they were going out, Misty would have called me to ask for my advice on how to act - as if I could advise anyone on how to deal with Gary. I just thought I would plant the seed in his head to ask her out, in case he'd forgotten about her already. He'd seemed crazy in love with her last week, which was the first time any of us had ever see Gary act that way. But if she'd escaped his mind already, that would be a lot more like him.

He said, "You wish."

The water was so cold that my head ached. I didn't dare glance at him. That would certify how much I cared. But I was astonished he saw through me. He knew that I was worried about him dating Dawn, and that I'd be relieved if he dated Misty again. I tried so hard to be conniving and still wasn't nearly as devious as Gary when he seemed off his game.

Abruptly, he pointed the hose away from me, into the lake. Dawn was about to start. I wiped the football on the only dry section of my shirt that was left.

"Girl power!" called Joy. She might have been a little drunk.

Dawn dashed down the grass and hurdled over the cooler, clearing it by a foot. Gary sprayed her with the hose, catching her square in the left boob. I almost cried foul. I put my hand over my mouth.

Dawn just laughed. She kept running to the end of the lawn, across the sand, and leaped for the rope. She swung way out over the lake, and I threw the football.

Thinking back on it later, I didn't remember being angry with her for flirting with Gary. I would never hurt her for that, or for any reason, on purpose.

Still, there had to be some explanation. The football hit her in the chest so hard that I heard the _smack_ where I was standing. She dropped into the water with the ball and disappeared under the surface. The _smack_ echoed once across the lake.

"Nice arm, son," my dad called to me. He gave me a thumbs-up.

"Why are you egging him on?" my mom complained. "You never threw a football at _me_ that way."

"I didn't bother. You catch like a girl. Watch, Dawn will come up in a second with the ball."

A second came and went. Two seconds. I watched the spot where Dawn had disappeared.

Gary said, "You've killed her."

The football popped to the surface. By itself.

I jumped into the water and swam toward the spot. At the same time, Green and Paul sprang from under the tree and ran into the lake. I'd only managed a few strokes by the time they dragged her up the beach, one on each side.

I swam after them as fast as I could and ran up the beach. She was on all fours, face white. Her ribs pulsed as if she was trying to cough but she couldn't get any air in or out.

Everyone surrounded her now in a tight circle. "Dawn!" her dad shouted.

"Pound her on the back," Joy suggested.

She shook her head, eyes closed, and held up one hand.

I'd seen that face plenty of times before, when we were kids. "I knocked the wind out of her," I explained.

She nodded, sucking in small breaths. She looked like she might laugh, but she didn't have enough air to laugh.

My mom leaned down toward us. "Breathe," she told Dawn unhelpfully.

Dawn nodded again. She sat back in the sand and moved her hands in circles in front of her to show us she was trying. The skin on her chest between her breasts was bright red from where the football had hit her. Her gasps got longer and longer. Finally, she had enough air in her lungs to cough out, "Quarterback or what?"

The whole circled around us laughed - brothers heartily, adults nervously. I stood up, soaked T-shirt dripping on the sand, and put out a hand to help her up.

Her dad glared at me. I put my hand down and stepped back two paces. He extended his hand to help her, then pulled her away from the group.

Now everybody stood around in knots in the fading light, talking about their times when Dawn had gotten the wind knocked out of her. So I wasn't the only one who remembered this. My mom mentioned the time Dawn ran into the dock on water skis and broke her arm. Joy brought up an episode even I had forgotten about, when Dawn fell out of my tree house. Joy watched me as she said this, trying to gauge my reaction.

Maybe it was just me, but it seemed like none of us knew what to do until Dawn's dad finished talking to her. I only half paid attention to the stories of Dawn losing her breath. Underneath the laughter, I tried to hear what her dad was saying.

I couldn't catch most of it. Finally she started to walk away from him, and he raised his voice. "You're always getting hurt when Ash is around."

"That's because I'm always getting hurt," she said huskily, "and Ash is always around." She skipped back down the hill and stopped between Joy and me, careful not to look me in the eye.

"I'm really sorry," I said as quietly as I could without whispering and attracting even more attention. "I forgot you were a girl." I'd also forgotten Dawn did not like to hear this. Anyway, it wasn't exactly true. I _never_ forgot Dawn was a girl. I just never treated her any differently from the guys when we played games, because that's what she wanted.

Maybe I should start.

Gary walked by, tossing the wet football from hand to hand. "Forgot she was a girl?" he mused. "Didn't seem like it last weekend."

With one hand, I shoved him hard enough to send him reeling into the lake. He sprang out of the water and yanked me in before I could dodge him. He pushed me way underwater and held me there. I wanted to punch him, but I knew from experience that it was hard to do any damage in the water anyway. And I kept repeating to myself that I was already in enough trouble. For myself, it didn't matter so much, but Dawn was at stake.

I stayed quiet under his hands, waiting for him to let me up. He didn't. I ran out of breath and still he didn't let me up. I scrambled past him toward the surface. He tried to hold me down in the darkness. I had an inch of height on him, but he had quite a few pounds on me. With all the strength I had left, I broke past him and gasped before he could dunk me again. I deserved this for knocking the breath out of Dawn, but I'd had enough. "Uncle!" I yelled.

Above the surface, Dawn and joy and my mom were yelling too, hollering at Gary to let me go. He didn't listen to them, but he listened to me. Poised to put his hands on my shoulders and shove me under, Gary paused and cocked his head at me. "What?"

"Uncle," I repeated. "Isn't that what people say when they give up?"

"I don't know. You've never given up before."

Green and Paul splashed through the shallow water toward us, wearing familiar looks on their faces that told me they thought they were saving the day, separating Gary and me. Green reached Gary first and dunked him.

"I already said uncle," I told Paul just as he reached me, but this meant as little to him as it had to Gary. He turned me around and pinned my arm behind my back. He was still mad at me for trying to punch him in the boat last weekend.

We were even, then, because I was still mad at _him _for flirting with my girlfriend. I tried to jerk out of Paul's grasp. He held me so hard that even the water didn't help me slip free. Then he pulled my arm higher behind my back until it hurt.

"That's my throwing arm," I yelled. "Get the monkey off me, Paul."

"Isn't this fun?" my mom called in a voice bright enough to be a cartoon. "I'm so glad we've gotten the families together again. We should do this more often. Who's ready for some homemade ice cream?"

...

At the same time the next night, I crouched in my tree house, scoping out Dawn's house. Yes, I felt ridiculous, but the woods between her house and mine weren't thick enough for stealth. If I was going to watch her driveway unseen, there was nowhere else to hide except in the bushes, and I absolutely refused to hide in the bushes. That would make me a creep.

The tail lights of her dad's car blinked on. She backed out of the garage and drove down her driveway, then turned toward town and disappeared.

I jumped from the tree house, ran across her yard, and burst through her front door. Maybe I should have rung the doorbell. Possibly I was no longer welcome in her house. However, I'd never rung the doorbell when I'd come to see Green before, so it didn't seem right to start now.

Luckily I didn't have to deal with this. Mr. Berlitz didn't notice I was there. Through the glass door in the den I could see him out on the screened porch, his favorite place lately. He was reading and didn't look up. I dashed up the stairs. With only a glance into Dawn's disaster of a room - disappointing as usual, wakeboarding posters on the walls, books strewn everywhere, no underwear in sight - I ducked into Green's room.

He sat at his desk, pecking on his computer keyboard. He didn't look around at me either, but he asked, "Yes?"

"Let's go," I said.

"Go where?"

"On Dawn's date with Kenny."

Now he looked at me. "I wasn't aware it was a double date. And you're not my type."

"Cut the bullshit and let's go. We've probably lost her already. We won't be able to chase her to Kenny's. We'll have to intercept her at the movie and hope she was telling the truth about where she was going on this date."

He opened his mouth.

"Drew!" I hollered. "Come _on._"

He kept his mouth open and raised his eyebrows. When it became clear to me that he was not going anywhere until I let him talk, and clear to him that I was not going to interrupt him again, he finally said, "I have a date with May."

"Go over her house later," I said. "That's when the good stuff happens anyway. Come _on._"

He sighed at me, then turned back to his computer and moved the mouse.

"What are you doing?" I asked. "Shutting it down? You don't have to shut it down. Nobody is going to touch your computer while we're gone. Come _on._"

He kept moving the mouse and tapping on the keyboard like I was not standing there. "There might be a fire. I don't want to lose my data."

"It's summer," I said. "There is no data. And there will be no fire. The only person who sets fires around here is me, and I will be gone. With you. Following Dawn. Come _on._"

I swear it took me another fifteen minutes to forklift him out of his freaking data center. By then Dawn had picked up Kenny and made it all the way to the movie theater, I hoped.

And after I extracted Green from his room, he slowed us down even more by sticking his head out into the screened porch and telling his dad where we were going. I couldn't hear his dad's end of the conversation, but I could hear Green's. "Ash...why? _I_ didn't stay out all night with him...If he's with me, he's not with her."

"Come _on,_" I grumbled under my breath.

The only reason I was able to get him through the trees, into my driveway, and into the pink truck was that he called May on his cell phone. The second he'd ended the call with her, climbed into the passenger seat, and slammed the door of my truck, he was arguing with me again. "Why are we going on Dawn's date?"

"To make sure Kenny doesn't try anything with her." I cranked the engine and raised my voice over the motor. "To make sure she doesn't try anything with Kenny. When she makes a plan, she gets carried away." I backed out of the driveway.

"Geesh, Ketchum, nobody's going to give you a prize for backward racing." Green gripped the window frame with one hand and the edge of the seat with the other. He didn't relax until I'd reached the street. Apparently, speeding forward was not as frightening as speeding backward. He sighed, then said, "So basically, you're stalking her."

"I am _not_ stalking her." I insisted. "That's where you come in. If I followed her by myself, someone who did not understand the situation and did not realize that I am so responsible-"

Green snorted.

"-might mistake what I am doing for stalking. However, her big brother is with me. Therefore, we are protecting her." Suddenly thinking I might have forgotten some equipment, I raised the lid of the console, felt around in the compartment, and came up empty. "Are you sitting on my dad's binoculars?"

He pulled them out from under him and handed them to me. I stuffed them against my thigh, where I could grab them at a moment's pace.

"You would not believe this dream I had last night." Green said.

"I'll bet I would." I'd heard a lot of his dreams over the years. "Try me."

"I was being arrested by Kim Kardashian."

This was already funny.

"I was tied up," Green said.

"Of course you were," I said.

"And then the interrogating officer came around the corner," he said. "Guess who it was."

"May," I said.

"No!" he said, offended. "Megan Fox."

"I'm not buying it. Not when you've been going out with May and you haven't been banned from her." I didn't _want_ to buy it.

He reached up and ran his thumb across the seam of the headliner, which was beginning to come loose from the roof of the truck and sag into the cab, as if it were full of water. "May may have bandaged my wounds to ready me for more torture."

I shook my head. "I hate to be the one to tell you, but real girls do not want threesomes." Like I knew. He was the one in college.

He looked at me in horror.

I shrugged. "Sorry." Then I asked, "Was Miss Fox wearing leather?" I was just making conversation. I could predict the answer.

"How did you know?"

"I am very sneaky." I pulled into the movie theater parking lot, stopped my truck in a space nose-to-nose with a Beamer, and cut the engine.

The summer twilight was fading fast. The sky was pale pink behind the theater. Streetlights flickered overhead but couldn't quit commit to glowing at full power. The parking lot was packed full of cars and pickup trucks, but a lot of them were still occupied. High school kids pulled up next to each other and talked through their rolled-down windows. They held miniature tailgating parties in their trailer beds. A roving band of football players stopped at truck after truck, spreading rumors and stirring up trouble. At least, that's what I figured. I couldn't hear them, but I'd spent a lot of time in this parking lot.

"I can tell you're sneaky," Green said sarcastically. "That's why you parked right in front of her. I hope you wanted her to know you're following her. And I'm warning you, I don't think she's going to like it."

"I don't care whether she likes it or not," I lied. In reality I was trying to figure out where she'd gone. It was common for guys from my high school to say they were going to the movies with a girl. This did not necessarily mean they were going _into_ a movie. There was a lot to do _at_ or_ around _the movie without paying to sit indoors for an hour and a half in the dark while enormous heads talked at you and the explosions were few and far between. Often there was more violence outside the movie than inside. Possibly more sex. Almost certainly more shots fired.

Naturally I assumed that when Dawn said she and Kenny were going to the movies, she meant they were driving into the vicinity of the movie theater, parking in the lot, and showing off her new driver's license and her dad's Beamer to whoever drove by. That was bad enough. But she was _inside _the theater? In the_ dark?_ With _Kenny? _I looked through the binoculars. The movie theater lobby was empty.

"Let me ask you something," Green said. "Your short-term goal here is to monitor Dawn's date with Kenny. If you ruined her date with Kenny, that would be okay with you too."

"Duh."

"And then what?"

I put the binoculars down on the window frame and turned to look at him. "What do you mean, 'And then what?'"

"Dawn's going out with Kenny because she's trying to convince Dad to let the two of you date again. If you mess up her plan, you won't get to date her _and_ she'll be mad at you."

"What's your point?"

"I'm trying to figure out your long-term goal. What do you expect to happen after you scare the hell out of Kenny and piss of Dawn?"

"Long-term goal?" I mused. "I don't have any of those."

"Maybe you sh-"

"Ketchuuum!" Three guys from my football team finished hanging through somebody else's truck window and jogged over to mine. They poked their heads into my personal space and yelled. "Greeeeeen!" They reeked of beer.

"Hello." Green saluted them.

They retreated through the window, thank God. "What'cha doing with the binoculars?" the left tackled asked, grabbing them. "Wouldn't happen to have something to do with anybody's hot mess of a bluenette girlfriend going out with Kenny Kengo, would it?"

"It might," I admitted, grabbing the binoculars back. "I need these. We're staking her out."

"Stalking her out." The running back nodded.

If there was a chance in hell I would start as quarterback in the fall, I needed to get along with the running back. I said carefully, _"Stacking _her out."

"You're parked as close as you can get to her daddy's Beamer," the punter piped up. "You're waiting outside the movie for her. You have binoculars. Sure seems like stalking." The punter was a know-it-all.

"I'm not stalking her," I insisted. "I'm making sure she's safe. Besides, how could you stalk Dawn? She'd see you and come out to your truck and say, 'Hi, I'm Dawn. Are you my stalker? It's so nice to meet you! While you're stuck here watching my every move, can I bring you anything?'"

The running back laughed. "I had French with her last year. You sound just like her."

"Yeah." I sighed.

"Too bad you weren't out here with your binoculars ten minutes ago," the running back said. "They were standing in the lobby, and Kenny had his hand up her skirt."

The punter and the tackle backed away from the truck, doubled over with laughter. Between gasps, the tackle called to the running back, "You know that's her brother in the truck."

"I know," the running back said. "I'm just saying."

I turned to Green. He had gone very still in the passenger seat. He gave me a dark look, asking me with his eyes whether to believe this.

I didn't know whether to believe it either.

My so-called friends were already walking away. "Reggie," I called to the running back. "Come here."

Tears streaming down their faces, slapping each other on the shoulder, they sauntered over. I'm glad _somebody _thought it was funny, because I sure as hell didn't.

I grinned. "He did not," I said, trying to sound more skeptical than I was. When Dawn was trying to get Gary, she'd made out with me. Now that she was trying to get back together with me, maybe she'd asked Kenny to put his hand on her ass. Why not? "Reggie, come clean with me. Did he really?"

The running back held up his hand. "I swear on the bible."

"You don't have a bible." The movie theater parking lot was definitely not the place to be carrying one around, considering what went on out here.

"Here you go, here you go." The tackled pulled out a reciept out of his pocket and handed it to the running back.

The running back crumpled the receipt in his fit and held out his other hand. "I swear on this receipt for bubble gum and razor blades that I saw Kenny Kengo put his hand up your girlfriend's skirt, and I wish I'd had your binoculars."

"See you at practice in August, Ketchum," the tackled called through the window. "Good luck with your stalking."

"Staking!" said the punter. They moved across the parking lot and stopped at the next truck with an open window. They were probably telling people inside that they'd seen Kenny with his hand up Ash Ketchum's girlfriend's skirt. _Or,_ they were telling the people inside that they'd lied to me about this, and now they had a bet on how fast I got myself arrested.

"Do you believe them?" Green asked quietly.

"Of course not," I muttered. "They're just trying to get a rise out of me. They're worse than Gary." Untrue. Nobody was worse than Gary. They were pretty bad, though. "Why? Do you believe them?"

"She _was _wearing a miniskirt when she left the house," Green said. "I noticed this uneasily."

I turned to look at him again. Usually he appeared friendly, like Dawn, his face honest and open. At the moment, with his eyebrows down and his eyes fixed on the empty lobby, he looked like a murder.

"We'd better go." I bailed out the driver's side door at the same time Green stepped to the ground on the passenger side.

I made sure Green had caught up with me and was hulking behind me before I approached the guy manning the ticket booth. "Let me in for just a second."

The ticket guy looked me up and down. "No way, Ketchum. Pay up like everyone else."

"All I have to do is beat the shit out of the dude my girlfriend is with," I said, "and then I'll leave. Promise."

He narrowed his eyes at me. "Who's the dude?"

"Kenny Kengo," I said.

"My girlfriend _loves_ him," he said in a high voice that I hoped was supposed to be his girlfriend. "She thinks Kenny is the shit. I am sick of hearing about him." He looked over his shoulder at the door into the theater, then turned back to me. "If I let you in, you have to wait a few minutes before you stick it to him. I need time to get up to the projection booth so I can watch."

I nodded, then pushed through the door into the lobby. Green followed right behind me. I thought for a second that the ticket guy would say something about Green getting in free, too. Then Green shot him a scary look. I was a little frightened myself. I hadn't seen that look since we played World War II.

The ticket guy disappeared up the staircase to the projection booth. I counted to thirty, nodded to Green, and jerked open the door to the theater.

For a few seconds, I was blind in the dark. I averted my eyes from the movie screen. Gradually the silhouettes of seats and shoulders materialized, black on black. I stayed at the back of the theater, surveying the crowd.

Luckily, because it was convenient, or unluckily, because it did not bode well for Dawn being on a fake date rather than a real one, she and Kenny were in the back row. I could see right away that they weren't making out. She sprawled across her seat with one leg tucked under her and the other hooked over the armrest. She'd hung around boys too long. I know this, and she knew this, but I wasn't sure Kenny knew it. If he looked where I was looking, he'd get a glimpse of the gaping hole in Dawn's skirt, which her thighs should have blocked. And he must have been as turned on by this as I would have been if I'd sat next to her, because his arm was draped around her shoulders.

I took a few steps forward until I was even with the back row and called, "Kenny."

He looked over at me, startled. Dawn did too, and when her eyes slid to Green, her mouth fell open.

"Come outside with me," I demanded. Everybody in the back third of the movie theater was shushing me now. They sounded like snakes. I'd fallen into a pit of them and was fighting my way out, getting madder every second Kenny sat there with his arm around my girlfriend.

"Do _not_ go outside with him, Kenny." Dawn eased her legs together as if I wouldn't notice how she'd been sitting as long as she moved slowly enough. "This is not the plan."

The movie was full of explosions. A helicopter chased a car between skyscrapers and nearly side-swiped pedestrians or took out police cars. It was so interesting that I might have been able to sit down and watch the whole movie, at least until the explosions ended and the plot started again, if it hadn't been for Dawn. Even explosions and ADHD couldn't divert my attention from that.

"Let's go, Kenny," I said. I didn't care what Dawn thought anymore.

* * *

**Author's Notes: Would you call what Ash is doing _Stalking? _Or_ Staking? _xD I hoped you all liked this chapter. I actually had a lot of fun writing it, especially the part where they ran the course thing. Please leave a review, telling your thoughts, what you liked, what you didn't like..whatever! :) **

**I'm going to try to update as soon as I can. It may take a little while, being that I'm trying to get my interest back or it may not be. We'll just see, huh? :) I hope it won't take long, though. I really hate making you guys wait.**

**Until next time, ;D**

**- Angel _o/**


	9. Dawn: Plan Equals Fail

**Author's Notes: Hi guys! Sorry about the long wait, I feel horrible about making you guys wait for so long...but I had just been extremely busy lately and I'd lost interest in writing stories BUT now, my interest is back :D So no worries there. But again, I am terrible sorry for making you all wait for so long. I hope this chapter makes up for it :)**

**Now, you may read. I hope you enjoy! :)**

* * *

Dawn: Plan Equals Fail

I had never been so mad at Ash, and he had never looked so perversely hot. He scowled down at me, week-old stubble on his chin making him look older than sixteen and almost authoritative. Yet light escaped the edges of the movie projection beam, softened his features, and caught his long eyelashes.

Determined as I was to get rid of him and go ahead with my plan, he seemed equally determined to drag Kenny out of the movie theater. I mean, he seemed _really _determined and confident, like he was finally comfortable with his newly broad, tall body and anxious for another chance to try it out.

I glanced over at Kenny. When I'd called him about this date, he'd sounded excited about the prospect of seeing new popular venues in our town (movie theater! bowling alley! tennis court! that was pretty much it!) and meeting new people. In fact, he'd sounded a little too excited. And the entire half hour our fake date had lasted so far, he'd been a perfect gentleman. If you want to know the truth, I was a little disappointed.

Now, confronted with an angry boyfriend, which according to legend was a situation Kenny was all too familiar with, he shrank into the red velveteen seat. He must have been caught off guard. Any second now, he would spring into action. And if we went outside the theater like Ash wanted, I was afraid someone would get hurt.

I had no choice. The longer Ash stood there (with my traitor brother behind him) grumbling at us in a threatening tone, the larger a fraction of the audience would turn around and stare unabashedly at us, just as the back ten rows were doing now. In about thirty seconds, somebody would tell to the rent-a-cop the theater employed as a security guard and bouncer for unruly tween boys who threw bite-size candies at the screen.

"Pardon," I said to Kenny as I reached back to remove his arm from around my shoulders. "Sorry," I murmured to the couple I slid past in the row. "I can't believe you," I whispered to Ash as I stepped into the aisle.

I was so furious with him. But the theater was dark, and I was so close to him for the first time in almost a week, if you didn't count standing next to him on the dock yesterday and getting clobbered with his football pass. My skin tingled with awareness as I came within inches of him, and the hair on my arms stood up. I almost looked forward to the opportunity to tell him off.

I stopped when I reached my brother blocking the aisle. He actually looked angry at me. He was never angry at me. But no - his angry expression was directed pass me, at Kenny. None of this made any sense. Ash might have gotten dragged into my plan kicking and screaming, but the plan with Kenny was Drew pre-approved! Drew and I had discussed it.

I waited for Kenny to catch up with me. Ash fell in behind us as if he and Drew were our jailers. With Kenny's reputation, I figured he probably get hauled into fake-boyfriend status every day of the week. Each weekend he probably _really _stole someone's girlfriend. He could handle himself with Ash, I was sure. But I hadn't prepared him for this level of rudeness from Ash. I took Kenny's hand.

Strangely, he refused my hand. It was hard to tell in the dark, but it sure seemed to me like my hand chased his hand back and fourth around his hips, and his conducted evasive maneuvers. I knew he did not find me so loathsome that he would refuse to touch me - he'd just had his arm around me, after all. Perhaps he needed the barrier of clothing. Perhaps he didn't want to hold my hand in front of Ash. Maybe he was scared of Ash. But none of these things was part of the Kenny I knew by reputation.

So I walked up the aisle and through the bright lobby by myself, rejected from holding Kenny's hand, wishing I were holding Ash's. It occurred to me that his sort of teen intrigue was exactly what I'd always dreamed about as a tomboy tween paging longingly through fashioned magazines that might as well have been written in some sort of different language, as much as I understood about hobo bags and ankle boots.

"Ketchum!" called the movie worker standing in the doorway of the stairs up to the projection booth. "You didn't beat the shit out of him. You owe me your admission fee."

"I was in there for two minutes," Ash said through his teeth.

"That wasn't the agreement," said the movie worker.

I truly hoped the movie worker would get a clue and shut up soon. Ash seemed to grow taller and broader every second, and I wouldn't have put it past him to sock Kenny right there, if that was the deal Ash had arranged with the movie worker, and then to sock the movie worker for good measure.

"How long is the movie?" Drew snapped.

"An hour and forty-five minutes."

"Then he owes you seventeen cents," Drew concluded, ever the engineering major, even when he was completely off his rocker. "Dawn, give him seventeen cents."

"There were two of you in there," the movie worker protested. "That's..." He took way too long to add seventeen and seventeen.

"Thirty-four," I helped him out. "But Kenny and I paid full price, and we were only in there for..." I pulled out the new cell phone my dad insisted I spend my birthday money on before I went on a date anywhere with anybody. I glanced at the time. "Fifteen minutes. So _you_ actually owe _us_..."

"Fifteen dollars and nine cents."

I started to grin at Drew for his brilliant bit of figuring. Then I realized the voice hadn't come from him. It had come from Kenny.

My astonishment at bad boy Kenny letting loose with this nerd-bomb was exceeded only by Ash suddenly shouting. "LET'S GO!"

The four of us walked all the way across the parking lot. When we got close to my dad's car, I saw that Ash had parked right in front of it. He'd pulled up so close that the bumpers were within a millimeter of touching, because Ash was like that.

I turned to Drew and said, "I need to talk to Ash alone."

"I can't let you do that."

"The alternative is for Ash to get in a fist fight with Kenny here in the parking lot. That is assault. You will have aided and abetted him by coming into the movie theater and dragging Kenny out of there. How is that going to look on your job application to NASA?"

"Well..."

"Didn't you say Ash and I could talk as long as you didn't see it?"

He gestured to Ash's truck, looking ill. "Go ahead." He said something to Kenny and folded his arms while Kenny climbed into the front seat of my dad's car. Then my brother slid onto the hood of Ash's truck with his feet on the bumper and stared Kenny down. My brother had never acted this way before, except when we were kids playing war and the Ketchum boys made him be the evil Nazi.

I turned to Ash. "Get in," I said as forcefully as I could. I climbed through the unlocked door of his truck, into the driver's seat. I'd been in the driver's seat all night, and it made me feel more in control of my little teenage life careening down the toilet. I wasn't ready to give up that control now - especially in the face of Ash's anger. I cranked the engine with the keys he'd left in the ignition and hit the buttons to close the windows. Bad enough that everyone in this town between the ages of thirteen and twenty-one could see us have this argument. I didn't want them to hear it, too.

Ash rounded the truck and slid into the passenger side. Except for our positions on the seats being reversed, we'd sat exactly like this lots of times a couple of weeks ago, when we were only pretending to like each other. I wanted to do that with Ash again. I was trying to get us back there, and he'd sabotaged me half an hour in!

The second he closed the door behind him, I hollered, "What part of 'I'm pretending to go out with someone worse so my dad will let me date you' don't you understand?"

He swung his head around at me, pinning me against the seat with his brown eyes full of anger. "The part where Kenny puts his hand up your skirt."

I laughed because it was funny. It was something you would hear about a slutty girl in ninth grade or a popular girl in eleventh. I was neither.

Then I stopped laughing. Ash obviously believed this had happened. Where in Arceus's name had Ash gotten this idea?

I leaned forward and said carefully, "Ash. You saw Kenny and me when you so rudely interrupted our fake date just now. He did not have his hand up my skirt. And you did not give us a lot of warning that you were coming, so I would not have had time to remove his hand from my nether region. Honestly!" I blushed at the very idea of doing this in a movie theater.

"Not in the movie theater. In the lobby." Ash's words were still closed and angry, but the fire in his eyes had cooled a few degrees. Possibly he was realizing that he was - gasp - wrong.

"Kenny did not have his hand up my skirt in the lobby," I said patiently. "That makes no sense. Even sluts do not let boys put hands up their skirts in the lobby when they have a whole dark theater at their disposal. Who told you that?"

He looked out over the parking lot, then gestured toward a group of three football players weaving among the cars. One of them stopped, put his hand over top the beer can he was holding, shook it up, and spewed it all over the hood of an outsized Lincoln Continental.

"Reginald Evans," Ash said.

We both watched Reggie hightail it across the parking lot, away from the driver of the Lincoln, dodging cars like they were defensive tackles. I saw why he was the star running back on our high school team.

He was not, however, somebody I would trust for personal information about my friends. I said, "Reginald Evans can't read. I was in French with him last year."

"Well, maybe he just can't read French." Ash tracked Reggie's path until he was looking at me again. "Miniskirt or what?" He did not sound appreciative as he said this. He sounded bitter.

"Or what?" I exclaimed. "In case you missed this when I explained it very carefully last night, I am pretending to be on a date with Kenny, and I am dressed accordingly."

"Oh, yeah? You never wore a miniskirt when you went out on a date with _me_."

"I never went out on a date with you!"

"What do you call last Saturday night? You wore flip-flops and my jean cutoffs."

I huffed out my exasperation. "I call that hanging out all day at the festival on the lake, then spray painting our names on the bridge. Miniskirts are not appropriate attire for crawling around public structures. Somebody could look up my skirt and see my sexy panties."

"If you tell me you are wearing sexy panties right now, I'll-"

"You'll what?" I wasn't challenging him. I was reminding him that his anger did not match anything he was actually going to do, and his own mouth was his biggest enemy.

He glared at me for a few seconds as my words sank in. Then he sat back against the seat, let out a huge sigh, and fished in his pocket. He brought out his lighter and flicked it, watching the flame. "You didn't wear a miniskirt for that couple of weeks when you were pretending to date me."

"That's because you were taking me mud riding!" I pointed out. "Besides, I _did_ wear a miniskirt for the first Ketchum party of the year." It was even the same miniskirt I was wearing now, the only one I owned. It was my go-to outfit for intrigue.

He nodded. "You didn't wear it to the party for my sake. You were trying to get Gary."

I banged my head against the driver's side window - on purpose, to emphasize my frustration, but a little harder than I'd intended. "Again with the Gary," I said.

"Again with the Gary," he agreed self-righteously.

Without raising my head from its resting place against the window, I said, "You're not supposed to be jealous of Gary right now, Ash. You're supposed to be jealous of Kenny."

"Oh, go ahead and make an ADHD joke," he said. "Go ahead."

"Ash!" I shouted. "I do not make ADHD jokes about you. Gary does that. I am your friend."

He looked out the passenger side window. "Is _that_ what you are now?" he said to the glass.

"I don't know what to say to you, Ash," I told his back and dark hair, which were getting longer and looked like he was actually grooming his hair about as often as he was shaving, i.e., never. "You're determined to be mad at me no matter what."

His shoulders rose and fell slowly with a deep breath. Still looking out the window, he said, "Tell me about your panties."

I was going to tell him the sexy panties were a joke. Then it occurred me that sexy panties were my friend. The whole thing might backfire on me if he believed I wore this mysterious lingerie for Kenny. But I was hoping I'd made him feel sheepish enough about the ridiculous hand-up-the-skirt scenario. All that was left was to get Ash back in my corner. I did this by waving imaginary sexy panties at him.

"They are red lace," I said. "See-through. They are those boy shorts, do you know what I mean? They cut across my butt. They're kind of uncomfortable to sit on, actually." I made this up based on my last glance into the window of the lingerie shop as I walked toward the sporting goods store. In reality I was wearing Pokemon panties I'd had since I was at least in seventh grade.

Ash totally bought my story, though. He turned toward me with his eyes wide, but little frown lines remained between his brows. He flickered his lighter and held his thumb on the button so the flame burned steadily. He dipped his head to examine my thighs sticking out of my miniskirt. He was imagining the phantom panties. His gaze traveled up to my Slinky Cleavage-Revealing Top. Finally his eyes met mine. They did not look friendly, exactly. I would not have asked him to borrow twenty dollars just then. They looked...lustful?

Yes, this was a lustful look, I was pretty sure, judging from the way my body answered. This look lit fuses in my heart and left trails of gunpowder down my limbs for the fire to burn along.

I wiggled on the seat, emphasizing that my imaginary lace boy shorts were cutting into my butt cheeks.

Ash's mouth dropped open.

_KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK._

I jumped, sure that my heart knocking against my chest in response to Ash's lustful thoughts was going to kill me.

But it was only Drew, still sitting on the truck, knocking on the hood. Then he twirled his finger in the air: _Wrap it up. _He was sweet to signal us without looking at us, so he could still tell Dad truthfully (sort of) that he hadn't seen us together. I would have felt overwhelmed with sisterly love for him at that moment if he hadn't been disobeying my direct order to help me change Dad's mind. He was guarding my fake date like a prisoner of war.

"Are you still mad at me?" I asked Ash.

He worked his jaw, still staring a hole through me, but he didn't say a word. He flicked his lighter again.

"Fine." I opened the driver's door and slid out of the truck very, very slowly, letting my skirt ride up _way _to high to escape the notice of the parking lot. I calculated the precise height at which it would reveal the super-sexiness of Piplup, Chimchar, and Turtwig, and stopped there, so that my phantom sex panties remained forever my secret.

"Dawn-," Ash growled.

I jumped down from the truck and slammed the door. Ha! Try that teen soap-opera business on me, would he? I was way ahead of him. I had stepped up my MTV intake for precisely this reason.

As I passed Drew, I called, "You and I are going to have a talk when we get home, young man."

He glared at me. "Are you sure you want to ride home with Kenny after what he did?"

"He didn't do anything, as Ash will tell you. Both of you were taken in by a running back who couldn't tell _la _from _le_." I flounced around the back of the Beamer - Ash had parked so close to it that there was no room to slip a piece of paper between the bumpers, much less me - and slid into the driver's seat, trailing my long sexy legs behind me for Ash's benefit (and accidentally kicking over an Cola bottle standing upright in the parking space, which somewhat ruined the effect, what with the fizz. Not to self: Sexy exits do not include fizz).

"Kenny, I am so sorry," I gushed as soon as I'd closed us safely inside the car and locked the doors. "I know you've met them both before at some point, but in case you've forgotten, that's my boyfriend, Ash, whom we're trying to get me back together with, and that's my brother. They know about the plan, but their friend told them that you-" I took a deep breath. I'd just been boasting about my panties to Ash, but I couldn't even bring myself to tell Kenny what the ruckus was about. It was so embarrassing, not to mention far-fetched.

Or was it? According to the rumors, the old hand-up-the-skirt ploy wouldn't have been new to Kenny. However, it definitely didn't go with the vibe I'd gotten from him since I picked him up for this date. He'd put his arm around me when I'd asked him to in the theater, yes, but he hadn't tried to go down my shirt, which was standard eighth grade fare in the back row of the movie theater (or so I gathered - not that I knew this from personal experience), and which I wouldn't have put past him. I'd been willing to take the risk in the name of getting Ash back.

Kenny said in a small voice, "Could you get me out of here?"

I looked over at him, his dark hair gelled, his shoulders broad in a preppy pink shirt that no male in town would have been caught dead in but that somehow worked on the Hoenn boy. A lot of girls said he had a mesmerizing stare that made them want to take their bras off, but to me it had always looked a lot like bug eyes, and right now he was staring bug-eyed at Ash and Drew way up in the truck. They glared right back down at him.

"Sure. Do you want to go back to my house?"

"Will _they _be there?" he asked, bug eyes never leaving the horrifying threat in front of him.

"Er, no. My brother has a date with his girlfriend. I don't know what he's doing here, come to think of it. And Ash wouldn't dare set foot in my house." I wasn't sure this was true. The longer I knew Ash, the more I realized there wasn't much he wouldn't dare to do, even in the face of my extremely angry father.

Hey, great idea! "Yeah, let's go to my house." With Kenny quickly losing his enthusiasm for this fake date, I needed to squeeze all the juice out of him while I could. That meant introducing him to my dad. Over the next few days my dad would ask around town about Kenny and find out about the many horrors about him.

Sticking my tongue out at Ash - he just turned away - I cranked the engine of the Beamer, looked carefully behind me for football players, monster trucks, and Cola cans, and back out of the space. I half expected Ash to follow right behind me. Half _hoped _he would. Because that would have given me another chance to argue with him. Arguing with him seemed to be allowed by Drew and, bad as it was, it was miles better than no contact with Ash at all.

But an entire drive of watching the rearview mirror assured me I'd shamed Ash and my brother sufficiently to shake them off my tail, damn it. As I parked the car in my driveway, I turned my attention back to Kenny, who was curled into a ball in the passenger seat, shaking. "Oh Arceus, I'm so sorry about the air-conditioner. Why didn't you say anything?" I cranked the cold air all the way up, and Kenny was getting frostbite. Not everybody got all hot and bothered when Ash stared at them, apparently.

Kenny didn't uncurl from his ball.

"Hey." I reached over and rubbed his knee in a friendly warming-your-skin way, not a way that would earn me the hickey from Kenny that had been claimed by several sophomore girls whose stories I didn't entirely trust anymore. "Let's go in and meet my dad."

I thought he might regain some of his bravado by the time we got inside. But as soon as I opened the door in the garage and crossed the kitchen into the living room, he continued to trail after me like a kitten with PTSD from being shot with way too many Nerf darts. There was a reason the Ketchum's cat did not often venture out of the master bedroom. Kenny would never scare my dad while he acted like this.

I would have to rely on Kenny's reputation getting back to my dad. Then my dad would say, "My goodness, that timid boy is actually a man-slut? By analogy, Ash Ketchum, who seems to have a death wish, probably has his shit together after all!" Of course, this was the best-case scenario, or perhaps the in-my-dreams scenario. In retrospect, this was one of the reasons my plans had a tendency to backfire.

I walked into the living room and stopped so fast that Kenny plowed right into me. Dad was sitting on the couch all right, and Joy was curled up next to him.

In a miniskirt!

Well, maybe not a miniskirt. It might have been mid-calf length, and I got the first impression that it was a miniskirt because she usually favored floor-length hippie garb. She'd kicked off her Birkenstocks to reveal freshly painted red toenails. In short, for Joy, she looked adorable. I was sure this was an accident.

"Hi!" I exclaimed as if I'd totally expected my ex-au pair. But I truly hadn't bargained on Joy being there. This threw a monkey wrench in my plans, though I wasn't sure yet whether it was a big sucker like a pipe wrench or something that would be easier for me to manage like a little Allen wrench. We all exchanged greetings and I introduced joy and my dad to Kenny.

"Kenny Kengo." My dad stood and gave him the firm handshake and the full grin he used with clients. "Nice to see you again."

"Yes, sir." Kenny sounded as if he might faint.

"All right then!" I announced. "Kenny and I are going up to my _bed_room." I figured if this date with Kenny had any thrust left with my dad, it was the fact that we were going to hang out in a room with a bed in it. I did not add that when we go to said _bed_room, we were not going to make out. We were going to have a long talk about how my dad already knew Kenny and why it was nice to see him again.

We started up the stairs, Kenny ahead of me, when my dad called, "Dawn, can I have a word with you alone?"

Kenny paused and turned his traumatized kitten bug eyes on me. I nodded for him to go on into my room. As I bounded back down the stairs by myself, I resisted the urge to rub my hands together with glee. My dad wanted to give me a Talking-To about Kenny! Hooray!

I reached the living room again and my dad was still grinning, which did not bode well for the Talking-To from the concerned parent. Also, Joy hadn't budged her organic cotton-covered booty, which confused my interpretation of what my dad had meant by "alone." I could almost see her waving a monkey wrench at me.

"Young lady," he said, which was a pretty good start for the Talking-To, "I am so proud of you."

DAMN IT!

"Thank you!" I beamed at him like I knew what the hell he was talking about.

"I have been Kenny's grandparents' counsel since they founded the yacht club," he said. "I've watched Kenny grow up. He's a terrific student, as I'm sure you know, with designs on Yale. But his grandparents have always been concerned about his social life and frankly, his mental health. He hardly peeks out of his shell at his private school in Hoenn. Then he comes down here to stay with them in the summer, and apparently he tells a lot of tall tales, making himself out to be some sort of Lothario."

"You're kidding!" I did not need to fake my astonishment, though I was not astonished for the reason my dad assumed.

"It's wonderful that you've started a friendship with him," my dad went on. "I'm sure it will do him good."

I was sure a knuckle sandwich would do him more good, but I refrained myself from saying this. "Dad, your pride means more to me than you know." We gave each other a final maniac grin and I headed for the stairs again, but not before I caught a glimpse of Joy watching me. She knew I was up to something.

Well, lucky for her and Dad, I was not up to a whole lot at the moment. I slogged up the stairs, into my room, and closed the door behind me.

Kenny was sitting on my bed, thumbing though one of the issues of _Playboy_ I'd stolen from Drew for fashion advice. He threw it back into the drawer of my nightstand and slammed the drawer shut, as if I would be completely fooled by this and had not been the one who put the magazine there in the first place.

I sat next to him on the bed and smiled sweetly at him. "You're so tense, Kenny. You're not still worried about Ash and my brother kicking the shit out of you, are you?" To be honest, I think they're still mad, but they don't have the martial arts training like you do."

He stared at me. His eyes were so wide that I swore they were going to rebel and pop right out of his head and wander around the room, looking at whatever they wanted. If they ventured up my skirt, I was going to step on them.

"What am I going to do?" he cried.

"What do you mean, what are you going to do?" I asked him innocently. "You trained in Unova for your black belt. Just get in a good lick or two, and maybe they'll leave you alone. Maybe, I'm saying. Drew probably will. Ash might not. Ash doesn't always respond to negative reinforcement like you'd think."

"Dawn!" Kenny cried. "I'm not who you think I am!"

I cocked my head and blinked at him. "You're not Kenny Kengo, grandson to the Kengos of the Kengo Yatch club, student at a fancy schmancy private school in Hoenn?"

"I am all that," he admitted, "but I don't have a black belt."

I had surmised this already, but I played along. "You don't?"

"No. And...Dawn, can you keep a secret? I have so much bottled up inside me, and the pressure is getting to me." He swallowed. "I didn't date Miss Hoenn when I was in middle school."

"You didn't?" I tried to feign continued interest. But if he wanted to self-debunk, he might go on all night, and frankly I was more interested in what Dad and Joy were watching on the Discovery Channel.

"No. I'm basically just a nerd. I have a 4.0 GPA, and I plan to matriculate at Yale and major in cognitive science with a double minor in statistics and ancient Kanto."

"You don't." I stifled a yawn.

"I do. The reason I'm spending the whole summer with my grandparents is that nobody knows me here, and I can be whomever I say I am."

There were a lot of things about this statement that made me angry. The lie. The fact that I'd been taken in by the lie. His smug tone of voice when he talked about it, revealing himself to the biggest nerd I had ever met, even nerdier than the kid in my Geometry class who collected antique motherboards, and absolutely the worst person I could have chosen to drive Dad into letting me date Ash again.

I said, "Can you be a person who is GONE FROM MY BEDROOM?"

Instead of moving away from me, which I would have much preferred, he scooted closer to me on the bed. "Why are you angry, dawn?"

"Why do I have to explain this to everyone twice?" I ran my hands though my hair and squeezed my head to keep my brain from falling out. "I was trying to go out with Satan so Ash wouldn't look as bad to my dad. If my dad already _knows_ you have a 4.0 and you _know_ that he knows, why did you agree to go on a fake date with me?"

"You made me an offer I couldn't refuse," Kenny said. "You offered to show me around town and introduce me to people. I knew you were popular because you're always at the party next door." He nodded toward Ash's house. Those Friday night parties, ethereal and magical in my memory, admittedly had been excruciating in reality because I'd always been trying to get Gary's attention. Or, more recently, Ash's.

"And you're so pretty." He scooted even closer to me on the bed and put his hand on my thigh.

Just what I'd waited for all night. And now, not so much. I glared at him.

He wisely removed his hand without further prompting from me. "Dawn, come on. Don't be mad. Aren't you basically doing the same thing, putting on this big show for your dad to get what you want? You can't be mad at me for fooling people. Besides, we have to survive another ten minutes in your car together. I don't have another way home."

"Why don't you call your family's helicopter to come get you," I suggested, "or did you make that up too?"

"My family does have a helicopter, but I didn't crash it into the Skyarow bridge in Unova. I hope you didn't believe that part of the story. It only works on twelve-year-old girls."

"Why are you trying to impress twelve-year-old girls? Are you that desperate?"

He opened his mouth.

"Don't answer that," I interrupted. I didn't want to know.

A knock sounded at the door. I thought about tackling Kenny on my bed, but now that I knew my dad saw through Kenny's whole bad-boy lifestyle, there was no point. I didn't even leap over to Kenny and snatch up his hand. "Come in," I called like a girl without issues.

The door creaked open very slowly.

My heart raced. Ash!

No such luck. It was only Drew peering into the room with that now-familiar scowl on his face. "Leave this door open," he said.

"What are you doing home?" I demanded. "I thought you had a date with May tonight."

"I do," he said. "I came home to get my car and take a shower before I go over to her house."

I thought for a second. "Why are you just _now _home? What did you and Ash do after we left the movies?"

My brother looked guilty. "Nothing." With a final dark look in Kenny's direction, he disappeared.

"Drew," I called. Now I did drag Kenny by the hand after me as I followed my brother into his room.

"That's why I have to take a shower," my brother admitted, opening a drawer and extracting a neatly folded T-shirt. He grabbed the center of the T-shirt he was wearing and stretched it out toward me. "Do I smell like kerosene?"

I sniffed tentatively. "A little." I wonder whether Ash was home taking a shower before his mother could ask him about the peculiar kerosene odor. "If you're going to May's anyway, can you drop off Kenny at his grandparents'?"

"No!" Kenny exclaimed from behind me.

I turned around. I could tell from the way his eyes flitted back and fourth that the look on my brother's face was not any more hospitable than the look on mine.

"I mean...," Kenny stammered. Suddenly he forced over my shoulder, and his eyes lit up. "Is that a B-17?"

I looked where he was looking - at the huge model of World War II-era bomber hanging by finishing line from the ceiling. "Why, yes," I informed him. Drew had built it from a kit when I was fourteen, and I had applied the decals. It was our pride and joy.

"At home I have a B-17E, with the longer fuselage." Kenny stepped farther into my brother's room, closing the gap between them. Clearly he had lost his fear of being eaten.

"I always wanted a B-17G, which has six more guns," my brother said, and with that they lost me. Since I'd been trying to shake some of my grosser tomboy habits, I should have been glad that I was so easily out-boyed by a boy.

"Before I go," I informed both of them, because clearly it was okay for my brother to take Kenny home now, "I have one more favor to ask of Kenny."

* * *

**Author's Notes: Yeah~ so now you can see why the plan failed. xD 1. Ash and Drew crashed the date. 2. Dawn's dad already knows how Kenny _really_ is. And 3. Kenny lied about his entire reputation. So yeah, that plan backfired (as always). xD**

**Hm. I'm not exactly sure when I'm going to update again but I know it won't be months again, okay? :) Maybe a couple of weeks. Maybe sooner.**

I hope you guys enjoyed this chapter! :) Please review and Happy Holidays everyone! :D

**See ya soon~!**

**- Angel _o/**


	10. Ash: Chimney Rock

**Author's Notes: Hello! I am on a roll with updating my stories this weekend xD I even posted a new one, but anywho, I'm back with a new chapter! :) I _really_ like how this chapter turned out and I'm hoping you guys will too! :]**

**Thank you to everyone who reviewed the last chapter! :D I really appreciate it!**

**Now, you may do what you came here for ;)**

* * *

Ash: Chimney Rock

I didn't talk to Dawn again for a week and a day. I tried to stop being mad at her about Kenny. I knew Richawn had made up the indecent incident at the movies. Trouble was, when Richawn had suggested it, I had imagined it, and in my mind it really happened. Maybe if I'd been allowed to talk to her, I could have gotten over it, but since my dad gave me the evil eye if I so much as looked in her direction, the whole insult of it continued to dog me.

Toward the end of the week I couldn't stand it anymore. I called Misty and asked her what she'd done lately about getting Gary back. Unfortunately for her, or fortunately, depending on what you thought of Dawn's plans (and I did not think very much of them), Misty was not nearly as proactive as Dawn. I could have told Misty that Gary was patient and vengeful. If she didn't do something, the summer would end and he would go to college without ever asking her out again. He might even pine away for her, if he had room in his very small heart to do that, but it would be worth it to him if _she_ felt bad about breaking up with him,

So I suggested that she have everyone over to her grandparents' place on the lake. She would see Gary and, God help her, win him back. I would see Dawn.

Misty's grandparents' house was far enough away that my parents and Dawn's dad weren't likely to cruise by on the geriatric pontoon boat. It was close enough that we could all drive over there in the wakeboarding boat after business at the marina slowed down. It would look casual and spur-of-the-moment. It would not occur to Dawn's dad that Dawn and I could get in much trouble there, on the same lake as him, under the watchful eye of extremely old people.

And maybe, just maybe, Dawn and I could slip away from Green for a few minutes in private.

At least, that's what I figured. But Dawn's dad was smarter than I thought. Even though he knew I would be there, he allowed Dawn to go. But he made her go in her own boat with Green, while I drove with Gary and Paul.

That was okay. I wakeboarded the whole way over, which helped me get out some aggression. Paul was driving. He kept trying to run me into shore or over big logs floating in the lake. If I were ten, I would have crashed. But I was sixteen, and I had his number. The lake was mine.

The girl was not. At Misty's we swam, and we boarded, and we ate, and it would have been a lot of fun if I hadn't been watching Dawn the entire time, trying to look like I wasn't watching her, wishing I could get her alone.

Misty's grandmother already liked me. But she liked Gary more, because he complimented her on her apple pie (which was awesome, almost as good as my mom's, but it never would have occurred to me to compliment an old lady on her apple pie) and then insisted on helping her clean up the kitchen. He was really turning on the charm with her, but not with Misty. Thus Misty's grandmother would ask her a million times a day, _Why don't you date that nice boy, Gary? _and Misty would not want to admit that she had in fact broken up with Gary, and Gary had not asked her out again. I knew how Gary worked.

Late in the afternoon, the other guys went inside to watch TV. I should have been there, but I was not going to miss a chance to get Dawn alone. I stayed with her, Misty, and May on the pier, catching the steeply angled rays of the sun.

Misty let out a satisfied sigh. "I'm so glad Ash called me and told me to have you guys over."

Dawn looked over at Misty. Dawn had her shades on, but I could imagine the shocked looked in her eyes.

Misty wore shades too. However, she was sitting next to me, because we weren't banned from talking to each other, and we had no fear of Green looking out the window and seeing us together. Behind her shades, she cut her eyes at me.

Dawn didn't say a word. She turned and gazed out over the broad lake. But I knew she was wondering how deep my relationship with Misty was behind the scenes. This moved me a long way toward letting go of my anger at Dawn about Kenny. Now she had some idea how I felt.

After a pause, she gestured offshore. "I am going to swim out to that island. Ash is going to swim out to that island also."

"I am?" I didn't like being told what to do. But of course I would have swum across the Atlantic to see her. I pulled off my T-shirt, the first time my chest had been bare in a week.

She did the smallest double take, but quickly looked away from me again, toward the girls, and pretended to ignore me. "This is all purely for calisthenics."

"Of course," Misty and May said.

"So I don't want you to look around, see us missing, and sound the alarm that we have been eaten by Bryozoa."

"Bryozoa east plankton and microscopic stuff in the water," Misty pointed out.

"Clearly you did not watch the same space-alien movies I watched growing up." Dawn pointed at May. "And as for you, missy?"

"Yes?" May asked drily. It sounded like she was almost used to Dawn's plans as I was.

"I can't trust my brother to keep his mouth shut about this," Dawn said. "We have to make sure he doesn't see me."

"I have an idea," May said in the halting speech and overenthusiastic delivery of someone reading from a cue card. "Why don't I entice your brother into a dark corner and make out with him to distract him?"

"Ew. That is a great idea," Dawn said in the same tone.

May stood up and dashed up the dock toward the house. At least some people didn't have to be dragged into helping Dawn with her plans.

"That leaves me with Gary," Misty said doubtfully, but I could tell she was trying not to smile.

"And Paul!" Dawn reminded her. "Knock yourself out. Or...I guess you want to get rid of them. I know exactly how to make them forget you exist, if they haven't already with the Braves game on. Give them a bowl of fritos and some dip. Always works for me.

"Wow, it's that easy? Thanks, Dawn." Misty got up and walked toward the house more slowly than May had, watching the windows, undoubtedly hoping Gary would appear, looking for her. No such luck. I knew she held out hope Gary would throw her a bone, and I knew he wouldn't. I knew exactly how she felt.

"Race ya," Dawn said. Before I could even respond, she was gone. She splashed into the water and crawled at a good clip toward the tiny island three hundred yards from the dock.

I dove in after her, caught up with her in a few strokes, passed her, turned over, and did the backstroke right in front of her, kicking up big splashes in her face just to piss her off. I righted myself, treading water, looking for her.

She wasn't there.

"Sucker!" came from a long way off. I saw her wet blue head halfway to the island already. She must have passed me by swimming underwater. Now she sank under the surface again.

I swam as fast as I could after her. As I moved nearer to the island, I saw what a genius Dawn was and how brilliant a choice the island was for a place to slip away from Green. It was possibly even more masterful than my secret make-out hideout. Misty's grandparents' house was at the end of their neighborhood. Beyond it, the shore stretched around endless bends of red mud cliffs and pine trees, with not a soul in sight. The island sat right in front of those cliffs, at the edge of the busy river channel, but a **DANGER** sign indicating shallow water was stuck between the island and the bank, so boats wouldn't dare float through here. It was private. It was perfect.

I touched the bottom and walked through the sand, stirring up bits of mica that glittered like stars in the water. Looking back towards Misty's grandparents' house and their pier, I watched both disappear behind the trees on the island. Now Dawn and I couldn't be seen unless somebody came looking for us.

Dawn sat on the sandy, glittering beach of the island, directly in front of the **DANGER** sign, waiting for me. I waded toward her..

"Why have you been ignoring me all week?" she called. Her voice sounded annoyed. However, she sat leaning on one hand with her long legs folded gracefully, the warm lake lapping at them. With a small wardrobe malfunction of her pink bikini, she could have been a model in one of the issues of _Playboy _she used to steal from Green to study what kind of girl Gary was into, so she could be more like her. In fact, I thought at first she was teasing me by pretending to be that girl. But as I waded closer, I realized she really _was_ annoyed, and she was seducing me by accident. Hell, I would have been turned on no matter how she sat.

"I haven't been ignoring you," I said. "I've been obeying my parents."

"There's a first time for everything, I guess." She squinted at me and put up one hand to shield her eyes. A shadow covered half her face. The sun was peeking around my back and blinding her.

I held my ground, squishing my toes in the glittering sand, and made small movements back and fourth, just to bug her. The sun was hidden by my body. Then it hit her full force in the eyes. Then it went into hiding again.

She closed one eye. "I don't but it. You've been avoiding me. You're still punishing me for going out with Kenny. And that doesn't make any sense to me, because I sent Green over to tell you the Kenny thing did not work with my dad at all. Green came back and said you just shrugged."

I shrugged again. "How could you and I have talked about it without somebody seeing us?"

"You managed our trip into the woods okay."

"And we got busted." Since he eyes were watering, I figured she'd had enough of my game with the sun. I sank down in the water in front of her and leaned back on my hands in the sand.

"I guess I've been expecting more out of Mr. Daredevil, Mr. Devil-May-Care." She sat straight up and looked me dead in the eye. "I'm so glad you finally called Misty and arranged this excuse for us to see each other today."

She knew there was more to this, and she expected me to sing. Who did she think she was dealing with here, Paul? I hoped I played this cool, but I _did_ look away. I wanted to keep her on her toes, wondering if there was something going on with Misty and me, so she'd be a little bit jealous. But she was my friend, and I felt guilty.

After eyeing me silently for a few seconds, she finished, "Otherwise, I might not have been able to tell you what I did for you until it was too late for you to take advantage."

"Take advantage?" I looked pointedly at her cleavage. "What did you do for me? It must involve underwear."

As fast as one of my brothers, she shoved me. I lost my balance and fell backwards into deeper water. She jumped on top of me and dunked me. Yes, I got dunked by a girl, but only because we had trained her well, and she had surprise on her side.

As soon as I realized what happened, I grabbed her arms above me in the water and lifted her whole body only my shoulders. She bit off a squeal - remembering at the last moment that someone back at the house might hear her. I heaved her as far as I could from the island. By the time she swam all the way back again, water spilling from her long hair, I was sitting exactly where she'd been sitting on the beach before. I was the king of this mountain.

She walked up the beach until she stood directly over me. The water from her hair streamed into my eyes. "You are going to be sorry when you find out what I did for you."

"I doubt it." I laughed. "It felt pretty good to throw you."

"Kenny knew all along that my dad saw through him, but he failed to inform me of this. So I got some payback."

I wiped the water out of my eyes and moved a few feet to one side, out of range of her dripping body. "I definitely do _not_ want to hear about your payback with Kenny."

"Yes, you do." She followed me, stood over me again, and wrung her hair out on my head. "You know, his grandparents' yatch club puts on the Fourth of July fireworks display."

Now I had an inkling of what she was getting at. I couldn't help smiling as I put both hands over my head to shield myself from the water. "And?"

"And you're going to help."

The splashing stopped. I looked cautiously up at her. "I am?"

She was standing where I'd stood before. With the sun brushing the tops of the trees onshore directly behind her, I could see her only in silhouette, but I could tell by the movement of her hair that she nodded.

And explosion went off in my heart, followed by a few smaller percussions like a Roman candle. Dawn was drying me batty with her plans, but it wasn't every girl who would go out of her way to get what you wanted most in the world, besides her. Especially when it involved explosives. I breathed, "I love fireworks."

"I know!" She jumped up and down with excitement, and the silhouette of her hair bounced in long wet clumps. "But I understand you didn't want to hear this, and then you threw me into the deep water for no good reason, which hurt my feelings, so I'll call Kenny and tell him no thanks."

I reached for the center of her silhouette to grab her wrist. Instead I grabbed cloth, which gave as I tugged on it. The waistband of her bikini.

"Hey." She sounded a lot less outraged than she should have. I was the one embarrassed.

"I can't see you." I rose on my knees until my head was out of the sunlight and I could see her grinning down at me. _Then_ I grabbed her wrist and pulled her down on top of me.

"Which is really sad," she grunted as she fell, "because Kenny was excited about the idea. He's afraid of fireworks. The yatch club hires a professional company to put on the show, but Kenny's grandparents make him help every year. It's almost enough to make him give up his annual summer trip down from Hoenn."

With one hand I made a ponytail out of her wet hair and directed her lips towards mine. I kissed her.

"Mmph." She struggled to move her lips away from mine. "It would have been perfect if you'd done Kenny the favor of taking that chore off his hands. Oh well."

While she was talking, talking, talking, I wrestled her down onto the beach and put some of my weight on top of her so she would shut up, and I kissed her again.

This time it worked. I heard her sigh through her nose. I felt her relax under me. Not many girls would engineer a chance for me to set off explosives, and not many girls would enjoy kissing me on this beach. I thought it was nice, but I'd kissed enough girls to predict what they'd be complaining about at this point. The sand was somewhat muddy. Bugs buzzed in the forest surrounding us and might come out to get us at any second. Boats groaned in the river on the other side of the island. They could come roaring around the side of the island without warning and wreck on the **DANGER **sign. Even Misty, who put up with a lot, tended to be jumpy about these sorts of things.

Only Dawn viewed them like I did, as a part of every summer afternoon. She opened her mouth for mine and traced her short fingernails down my back. This made me shudder, like it always did. I wanted to be strong and unaffected every time we touched each other, but the truth was, Dawn could do things to me. The only way to keep the upper hand was to do things back to her. I kissed her until she forgot about tracing her fingernails up my back. I worked my way up to her. I knew this drover her crazy because her arms went limp in the sand.

A motorboat came closer and closer. The sound stayed on the other side of the island. We lay still together, listening to it reach the peak of its volume, then fade as it went on its way downriver. But the spell was broken. I thought we had a few minutes until Green would notice we were gone, but not so many that we could risk getting into it again and losing track of time, which we clearly had a problem with.

She looked up at me - not into my eyes, but at my chin - and seemed fascinated with rubbing her thumb on my stubble. "It makes a crispy noise," she said.

"Admit you like it."

"It hurts." She rubbed her own red cheek. Luckily we'd come over here in the boats, and if her dad asked her about it, she could claim windburn. She pushed my chest, and I let her sit up. Then she looked out across the water toward where the dock and the house would be if we could see through the island, but she put one hand on my thigh. On the _inside_ of my thigh, slowing moving up. This told me she was thinking the same thing I was thinking: We probably should be wrapping this up, but we weren't done with each other.

We should skinny-dip. That's what would happen if this were a movie. But I'd never actually known anyone who'd skinny-dipped, or admitted to it. I probably would have done it with my brothers at some in our lives, except Dawn was always around.

That was exactly my problem now. I would have given anything to see her naked, but that would mean she'd see me naked, too. I might have been the impulsive one in my family, but even I had my limits.

"Want to get naked?" she asked.

"No," I said instantly. After I'd thought for a second, I realized my first answer was the right answer for once. No, I did not.

"Me neither," she said.

I sighed with relief, then tried to turn it into some kind of offended gasp. "Why'd you ask, then?"

"You seem hell-bent on putting the last nail in the coffin," she said. "Nothing would get us in more trouble than being caught naked."

"We couldn't get caught."

"How can you say that?" She threw her wet arms wide in exasperation. Drops of water followed her fingertips, glinting in the sun. "We get caught every time we're together."

I clamped my hand over her mouth and whispered, "That's because you're yelling."

She pulled my hand away and cupped it in both of hers. She studied it, squeezed it, ran her fingers up and down my fingers. Then she looked at me and said, "I've missed you."

I let my head sink until my lips touched her hands, but my eyes never left her blue eyes. Love hurt. Honestly made it hurt worse, and I could hardly stand it.

I scooted away from her in the sand and gazed at a few white clouds, purple on their undersides in the late afternoon, in the brilliant blue sky. "This is only happening because of twenty-first-century society," I said. "Two hundred years ago, your dad would be glad to hand you over to me."

"Would he, now." She pushed me until I lay down on my back in the sand.

I thought she would kiss me again. If she did, I wasn't sure I'd let her. It would be ridiculous and uncharacteristic of me to turn down a make-out session from her - not to mention reckless, since the way things were going, I might never get another chance. But the more we kissed, the harder I fell, and the more it hurt.

She only laid her head on my chest, her damp hair spilling onto the sand around us.

I put one hand in her hair and slowly stroked. "Yes, he would let me have you, because I would be the best hunter in the forest. I would keep you clothed, fed, and safe. I would be quite the catch. Your dad would be so happy. He'd throw in a cow and a couple of chickens to sweeten the deal."

"You might be right! The early eighteen hundreds were the heyday of the sixteen-year-old male with ADHD." She smoothed her hand down my belly. "The world was your oyster."

"Damn right." I really was feeling like the world was my oyster that afternoon. In the back of my mind I always knew it wasn't, but a beautiful bluenette lay on my chest, and it was easy to pretend she wouldn't be snatched away from me again before the afternoon was over.

"You would not have to do trig." She stroked higher, wrapped her finger around one of my chest hairs, and tugged gently.

"I would not have to do trig," I agreed. "Could you please be more careful with my chest hairs? I don't have many."

"So sorry." Her hand slid lower again, which I liked a lot better anyway. "In the eighteen hundreds, I would have run away with you."

I sat up on my elbows to look at her in surprise. "You would?"

She sat up too. "Yes." She nodded with certainty. "And you would die in a saloon fight and leave me with ten children and one on the way and a crop in the field."

"I would do no such thing."

"Yeah, you would never have made it that far. You would have died of infection one of the times you broke your arm." Her hand moved to my upper arm and massaged the scar where the bone had come out. Her hand moved down and lingered on the scar on my forearm. Her fingers tickled across the position of the break that had been only a greenstick fracture, with no bone sticking out. She knew my body almost as well as I did.

"Maybe we should stay in this century and work it out," I murmured.

"No, I want to go back to two-hundred years ago, to the dysentery and the head lice. It's so sexy!" she got on her hands and knees and crawled forward until her bikini top was in my line of sight. I'd thought when we first got to the island that she was seducing me by accident. I didn't think so anymore.

"Stop it," I protested. As if.

"Say something else sexy," she purred.

"Louisiana Purchase."

She threw her head back and laughed. "And you got a D in history last semester? That mean teacher just didn't understand you."

But Dawn did, and she knew exactly what to say to make me feel like the smartest guy in the world. Or maybe she didn't _know._ Maybe she just did it. Fascinated, I reached and touched a wisp of her blue hair that had blown across her bottom lip.

Her laughter stopped, and her smile faded. She said huskily, "You're only three weeks older than I am, but when you do something like that you, you seem years older."

_I do?_ I wanted to ask. This was news to me. Great news. I held her gaze like I had been aware of this already, and I rubbed my thumb gently across her lip like I'd done it on purpose all along.

"You seem so much more experienced than I am," she said, "to make such a simple move so sexy." She closed her eyes and leaned forward.

I stroked her face lightly as she put herself into my hand like a cat that wanted to be petted (unlike my mother's cat which did not want to be touched at all), but I wasn't watching her face anymore. I was watching her bikini top and trying not to explode.

She whispered, " Have you done this with Misty before?"

I stopped my hand on her face, cupping her chin. she went very still, blue eyes on me, and the bugs buzzed louder in the trees behind us.

Of course I'd done this with Misty. Quite a few other girls, too. Just because I'd been waiting years for Dawn to notice me didn't mean I'd been waiting around the house.

I didn't want to lie to her about this. But that wasn't really what she was asking me. She was asking me if it meant more when I touched her, and if I felt more. I did.

She moved her head in my head, forcing me to stroke up, but her eyes never left mine. She'd made herself vulnerable, and she expected me to do the same, the perfect end to a happy stolen afternoon.

I couldn't. Sorry, but the weekend before, when she was out with Kenny, I'd felt vulnerable enough to last me the rest of the summer.

I said slowly, "We should go back. Wouldn't want to out stay your curfew."

"Who would do that?" she asked. "That would be stupid." she said this with no expression. I couldn't tell whether she was mad or not. She started to stand up.

I pulled her back down, rolled on top of her, and kissed her mouth one last time. It could have turned into another long tumble in the same, and it almost did. But even I knew we really couldn't stay here forever.

We waded together into the water, dove under, and came up. The sun wouldn't set for another few hours, but it had weakened since the midday heat. Now the water was warmer than the air. Crawling though it was like swimming through myself. The whole lake was mine, and Dawn was too. Bad as things still looked for convincing her dad I wasn't a criminal, at that moment I figured everything would work out okay. There was no way it couldn't on a beautiful day like this.

We reached teh dock. She treaded water and nodded toward the ladder. "You go first. Check for Bryozoa. My hero."

I climbed up. There wasn't a slimy colony of Bryozoa lurking on the rungs, and I'm not sure I would have told her if there were, because I liked to hear her squeal. I reached down and held out my hand to her - not that she ever needed help, but I felt good doing it.

"Better not even stand on the dock together," she said. "The longer we stay, the more likely they're watching. You go ahead. They probably want to get going before dark. I'll stay down here and act like I've been sunning myself the whole time. If they ask whether we were together, I'll say, 'Oh, has Ash been missing too? He must have gone for a long walk. I have no idea why he would do that. Mysterious!"

"Yeah, maybe nobody will ask you," I said, shaking my head. "Don't go offering that awful routine unless they ask, okay? God." I walked up the dock, snagged my towel, and put on my shirt.

"I'm going to try out for the school play just to spite you," she called. "You'll see. I'll show you all!"

I looked back at her treading water, just a blue head in a vast blue lake under a blue sky. A lot of blue.

Then I jogged up the sidewalk through the trees. Because I was sneaky enough to give the alibi some plausibility, I walked around the neighborhood for a few minutes, then walked through the garage in front of the house and entered the hall. I met Misty coming out of the bathroom.

"Hey!" she greeted me. "Did you have a nice time doing calisthenics?"

"It was okay. Did Gary ask you out?"

"I think he may ask out my grandmother before he asks me." She giggled, but her laughter died off with her smile. "If she didn't have fifty years on him, I would seriously say he was flirting with her. I think my granddad was jealous. When Gary acts like somebody he's just met is his BFF, is it all a put-on to make his ex mad and to get more apple pie? or does he feel something? Does he like my grandmother a friend, or is he making fun of her in his mind?"

"I honestly don't know." I had wondered this myself. I glanced down the hall toward the den. "Where is everybody, anyway? I hope Gary isn't in the house, the way you're talking about him. If he were, I would need to give you some lessons in sneaky."

She giggled again. Still watching the doorway to the den, I wished Dawn would come around the corner and see me with Misty when she was giggling like that. But I should have stopped thinking that way. As Dawn had explained, there really was nothing to her date with Kenny and no reason for me to be jealous.

"No," Misty said, "Gary, May, and Green are out on the deck. Dawn was out there a minute ago. She had a text message on her phone from her dad that said he and Joy were cruising to Chimney Rock. She said it sounded like her dad couldn't sit still, worrying about whether she was seeing you over here."

"It _does_ sound like that," I agreed. Good thing Dawn and I had come back to the house when we did, before her dad and Joy took a detour from Chimney Rock, rode by here out of curiosity, and found a certain island hideaway.

Misty nodded. "Dawn though it was the perfect chance to scare her dad. Things didn't work out Kenny, so she decided to try the plan with Paul. They just left for Chimney Rock in one of the boats. What's the matter? Hey, wait-"

I was already running down the hall. Misty's grandmother was in the kitchen, and I should have stopped and thanked her for the afternoon, but I was sure Gary had more than made up for me already, and there was no time. I dashed through the den and burst out the door onto the deck.

"Paul made out with Dawn when she was elven!" I yelled.

Gary and May looked at me with wide eyes. Green looked at me too, but he watched me with that war-criminal stare, waiting for the one last silver of evidence he needed to beat the monkey out of his best friend.

"In the warehouse," I panted. "When he was fourteen. So if you think he is innocently helping her out with her plan-"

Now Green was the one making a mad dash. I ran after him, passed him on the dock, and jumped into the driver's seat of the only boat left. I cranked it without looking behind me to see if Green had untied it or if Gary had made it in. But as I maneuvered into the open water, I heard Gary laughing as Green yelled, presumably to May on the deck, "I'll call you!"

Out in the main river channel, I accelerated the boat as fast as it would go and stared ahead at the blue water, willing the miles away so we could be at Chimney Rock already. I pictured Dawn asking Paul to kiss her in front of her dad. Paul would be more than happy to oblige. And somewhere in the middle of that kiss - she didn't mean to, you understand - she would remember why she'd always looked up the older boys, and she would fall for my other brother.

Echoing my thoughts, Green walked past me into the bow and stood there with the hard wind blowing his green hair straight back, hands on his hips.

Gary sat down across the aisle and leaned toward me. If he made a snide comment, I would punch him.

He hollered at me over the motor, "Are you going to throw-up?"

I jerked my head around at him, ready for a fight. But his face didn't give away that he was setting me up to be the butt of a joke, like I'd expected. He looked concerned. of course he was not concerned. Gary was not capable of this. He had controlled his face into a facsimile of concern.

"No, why?" I yelled back, still bracing myself for the other half of the joke.

"You look really pale all of a sudden." He reached across the boat and put his hand on my shoulder.

We stayed that way for approximately three seconds, him doing his concerned older brother imitation and me watching him like he'd grown another head, waiting for him to crack up.

Then he took his hand away, turned to the front, and stared into the wind like Green and me.

It seemed like hours, but in only a few minutes we reached Chimney Rock. Here the cliffs were higher, made of granite instead of red clay. Stacks of boulders like chimneys jutted out from the bank. For their trouble, they'd been covered in graffiti over the years, just like the bridge across the lake. A path led from the shore up the side of one boulder, where you could jump three yards into the water. That was for kids. The path kept snaking up through the woods until it emerged on an outcropping where you could jump ten yards into the water. And if you were really daring, you followed the path to the top of the rock, a twenty-yard fall into the lake.

That's why boats floated in front of the colorful cliffs now: to see who would jump. A lot of people walked out onto the highest outcropping. Very few of them went off. The people in the boat below taunted them and chanted their names if they knew them, but most would-be jumpers stared at the water for a few minutes, then made their way back down to the middle rock and jumped amid boos from the boaters. Which probably was just as well, because people had been killed jumping off the highest cliff.

But I wasn't interested in the jumpers today. Powering down the engine before I rammed someone, I scanned the crowd of boats.

"There they are." Green pointed to the far edge of the group of boats. I maneuvered forward until I picked out our target by its high wakeboarding bar. Paul sat behind the wheel, watching the highest rock, because he was chicken and fascinated. And Dawn sat sprawled in the bow, also seeming to watch the rock behind her shades, legs spread like a boy.

At the sound of our motor coming closer, she looked around and sat up, grinning. "Hey!" she called as if nothing were wrong. We idled even nearer, and still she still didn't clue in to the look on my face or on her brother's. "We've been here for a few minutes, but we haven't seen Dad. He sent me that text message quite a while ago, so he and Joy must have come nad gone. We were just about to head home ourselves. Oh well. It was a good idea, wasn't it?"

"Spectacular." I cut the engine and reached out for the side of the other boat so the two boats wouldn't grind together, and so Paul couldn't get away.

Green vaulted from one boat into the other and walked down the aisle until he stood in front of Paul. "Hey, buddy."

"Hey." Paul craned his neck to peer a the rock on the other side of Green's body. "Can't see through ya."

Green folded his arms. "I heard you kissed Dawn in the warehouse when she was eleven."

"Ash!" Dawn shrieked.

I didn't even care that she found out I'd spilled her secret. I focused on Paul, who was floundering in his seat, looking at Dawn and then at me looking for anybody to blame.

Finally he had to face Green again. "I was fourteen," he said sheepishly.

"I was fourteen a little over a year ago," I said. "You give it a bad name."

"If you want to teach him a lesson," Gary called from the other side of the boat, out of the fray, "I have an idea." He nodded toward Chimney Rock.

Green reached down toward Paul in the seat, and I reached forward. Between the two of us, with the threat of Gary as backup, we nudged and bullied Paul into our boat, leaving Dawn alone.

"Guys," Dawn called. "Don't do anything to him for coming over here with me. It was at my behest."

"He needs to learn when to say no," I threw over my shoulder at her as I started the engine. With Green and Gary guarding Paul in the bow, I idled the boat forward, easing through the crowd, until we touched land. Gary jumped out and tied the boat at the base of the path.

Paul just sat there, refusing to budge, until Green and I stood behind him and nudged him again. He was beginning to get the idea that there was no way out of this.

If all of us hadn't accustomed to each other through years or bullying, he might have tried to escape into the water or to plead his case. But he knew it was no use, and if he begged, he'd be doing it in front of a crowd, which probably included some people he knew. He eased out of his seat and skulked to the boat like he had an appointment to walk the plank. Which, in a way, he did.

The three of us moved up the path. Gary fell in behind us, smirking. "Paul, remember when you threw me off that first rock?" he called. "Remember I told you I'd get you back?"

"I was in third grade, you idiot. Only you would remember that."

This was untrue. By pegging the grade he'd been in himself, Paul had given away that he remembered it, too. And I remembered every insult as freshly as Gary did, every blow, every time Paul had shoved _me_ off that rock. On impulse I reached forward and slapped Paul on the back of the head.

"Hey!" he roared, turning on me.

Green put one hand on Paul's chest to hold him off. "Keep walking, my friend," he said with a threat in his voice.

We emerged from the trees onto the highest plateau, with more graffiti sprayed on the flat surface: **GO BACK! DANGER! JUMP AT YOUR OWN RISK! **Paul eyed it as Green and Gary and I continued to walk him slowly forward, nudging him, shoving him, stepping on his bare toes.

"People really have died jumping off this thing." He controlled his voice carefully, trying to keep face as the oldest brother, yet really, _really_ not wanting to jump off this cliff. "If I die, Mom will kill you."

"You should have thought of that before you made out with my little sister." Green pushed Paul hard enough that Paul stumbled dangerously near the edge and there was half a second when I thought he would lose his balance and tumble over.

He righted himself, breathing hard. The rest of us stood in a semicircle around him - close enough that he had no escape route between us, but far enough away that he couldn't pull a kamikaze move by grabbing one of us to take over the cliff with him. I seriously doubted Paul had the balls to do this, but stranger things had happened, and it was in the back of all of our minds as we faced each other uneasily.

"What do you want?" he demanded.

"Stay away from my sister," Green said. "Or we will bring you right back here, and we will not be so polite about it."

I'd suppressed how I felt when I'd realized Paul was with Dawn. I'd acted cool on the boat, and I'd kept it inside for the walk up here. Suddenly I couldn't keep it contained anymore, and it burst out of me in anger. "I wish you _would _go out with her gain," I challenged him.

"Ash," Green growled. "Wrong direction."

"Touch her," I yelled at Paul. "Just look at her. If you do - when does your girlfriend get back? Two weeks from now? I will drive straight to your college and tell her that you called my girlfriend buried treasure, and that you were willing to whore yourself just to make her daddy mad. And then I will take her out for coffee to console her, and one thing will lead to another..."

I could feel Green's eyes on me. Gary covered his mouth to keep from laughing. But Paul watched me carefully, as serious as I was. "My girlfriend would not be caught dead going out with a sixteen-year-old."

"We'll see," I said.

Green had changed his mind about the effectiveness of my threat. He chimed in, "With the beard, Ash looks older. Hell, he's taller than Gary."

"Hey!" Gary protested.

"Okay," Paul said. "I mean, of _course_ I'm going to stay away from Dawn. I didn't seek her out in the first place. _She_ came up to _me_ and said..."

I took a step toward him.

He eyed me. "...And I was just trying to help her, and you..."

I took another step toward him. I didn't care whether he too me over the cliff with him or not. If he didn't swear to stay away from Dawn, he was going over.

"Okay!" he exclaimed. "Yes, I was wrong. Okay?" When I didn't budge, he turned to Green to save him. "Okay?"

"Okay." Green grabbed him by the back of the neck and pulled him away from the edge. "Let's go."

For all their big talk and big threats, the three of them sure did hurry away from the edge now that we had this settled. They reached the trail and disappeared into the trees without looking back to see if I was following them.

I stepped all the way to the edge. The boats were tiny, and the water was dark blue here, the deepest part of the lake. In one of the boats closest to the cliff, I picked out Dawn by her long blue hair and perfect body and pink bikini. She stared up at me with her hands over her mouth. Somebody in another boat must have recognized me, or more likely thought I was Gary, because a faint chant made its way up to me: "Va_-der!_ Va_-der!_

I backed up three paces, took a running start, and jumped. The wind was what I noticed. Underneath it thought I could hear Dawn screaming, but the win was too loud in my ears for me to be sure. It was cold on my skin despite the light of the setting sun. The boats and the lake rushed up at me. I felt hight.

Then I hit the water hard - a lot harder than I expected, harder than it had felt smacking into me the millions of times I'd jumped off the middle cliff. The impact took my breath away, but only for a second. I sank so deep in the water that I hit a patch of bone-soaking cold. That woke me up again. If I sank any further, I wouldn't make it to the surface before I had to take a breath. I clawed my way toward the sunbeams shining though the surface.

I burst into the air and sucked in big lungfuls of it. Now that I knew I was alive, the high was wearing off already. My skin stung where I'd hit the water. And when I saw Dawn in the boat with her hands still covering her mouth, I remembered how angry I was. I swam over to her and hauled myself up on the wakeboarding platform in back.

She rushed forward me. "Are you okay?"

I frowned at her. "No, I am definitely not okay." I wrung out my T-shirt on her pink-tipped toes.

Her expression turned from concern to irritation as she realized I was upset about her escape across the lake with Paul. "I mean, did you break your wrist or something? Again? You look really pale."

"I think that must be left over from the shock and horror!" I started this sentence calmly, but by the time I finished, I was yelling at her, unloading everything I felt. Luckily my brothers and Green had descended the rock and were heading in our direction in the other boat, so I wouldn't have to stay here with her much longer.

She flinched at my voice. Slowly she recovered, putting her hands on her hips and frowning down at me. "I thought we had a nice afternoon, Ash. I thought we fixed everything."

The other boat arrived and floated past, allowing Green to jump on next to me. I traded places with him. Then, just as Gary started the engine again to take up home, I looked her square in her blue eyes and let her know exactly what I thought of her and her plan right now. I said, "So did I," and I turned toward the sunset.

* * *

**Author's Notes: And once again...things are screwed up! Just how long will Ash continue to put up with Dawn and her plans? :0 Well, you'll just have to wait to find out ;)**

**I hope you guys enjoyed this chapter! I had a lot of fun writing it, like I said, I really love this chapter. **

**Er, I'm not sure when I'll be updating again. But it shouldn't be too long of a wait! **

**Please review, and thanks for reading! :D**

**- Angel _o/**


	11. Dawn: Wined and Dined

**Author's Notes: Hi guys! Wow, it's been a while since I've updated this story. Sorry! /: I've been really busy with life and stuff. But, I'm on Spring Break and I took some time to finish this chapter! :]**

**Thank you to all who reviewed last chapter! Much appreciated! :D**

**Now, I hope you guys enjoy this chapter!**

* * *

**Dawn: Wined and Dined**

"Stay home tonight."

These were the first words Ash had spoken to me since he jumped off Chimney Rock last weekend. After the boys and I finished our wakeboarding practice Friday afternoon, I was tying the boat to the dock cleat when he jumped onto the wharf and bent to mutter this in my ear. He never stopped, just kept walking, carrying his life vest and wakeboard into the warehouse.

Of course, this was for the best. I glanced up at the screen porch of my house, where my dad was always watching - or if he wasn't, I _thought _he was, which amounted to the same thing. Ash had taken a big risk by bending down to talk to me at all.

On the other hand, you would think a boy with as much savvy and - let's face it - as many impulse control issues as Ash could have risked another tryst with me at some point during this whole week. He hadn't because he was still mad about Paul.

Plus...what did he want me to stay home for? Was he sending me a message via carrier pigeon? Or did he want me to stay home just so he'd know where I was while he went out and had fun? It was like him lately not to tell me and to expect me to play along.

And I'd had enough. I decided I should go out that night, just to spite him.

Problem was, I had no one to go with. May would be out with Drew. I sure wished Misty was available. I'd been itching to milk her for more about what had happened when she dated Ash in May. In the past he'd talked like their relationship hadn't meant much, but last weekend at the island, he'd hinted at something more serious.

There would be no milking tonight. Misty needed to spend Fourth of July holiday time with her family - which she said was an okay trade-off, since she got to take care of this on July the second. After a two-week hiatus for the beer infraction, the Ketchums had reinstated the boys' weekly party, just in time for a blowout tomorrow night on July the third. Misty would be able to come to that. And she could come with all of us to watch Ash's fireworks over the lake on the fourth.

So nine o'clock Friday night found me sitting at my desk in my room, carefully piecing together the tall of a B-52 Stratofortress. I'd bought the model earlier in the week because Drew and Kenny's convo piqued my interest again. I missed building models. It was strangely calming to construct something according to someone else's predetermined plan. A month ago I'd thought I needed to stop doing anything tomboyish so I could blend in with girls better and catch boys more efficiently. Now that I'd caught one and my dad had thrown him back, I didn't see the point in trying.

As I carefully lowered my X-Acto knife to place one of the machine guns, the gun fired a cloud of bullets! At least, that's what it sounded like. I bent to retrieve the knife, which had narrowly missed my foot, and wondered whether I'd inhaled too much glue. Then the noise came again - tiny rocks thrown against my window.

I turned out the lights, waited a few seconds with my eyes closed to adjust the dark, and looked outside. Ash stood between the trees. It could have been Gary - they looked enough alike - but Gary would never hike around in the woods in the hot, humid summer night without good reason. It would mess up his hair.

Ash switched a flashlight on and off to signal me in Morse code, which I'd picked up through many years of playing army. The boys always made me hold the grenades. Dot, dash, dash, dash...

J - U - M - P

Was he referring to his fall from Chimney Rock last Sunday? Did he want a medal? I opened my window, leaned out as far as I could without losing my balance, and stage-whispered, "What do you mean, jump?"

He walked closer. I still couldn't see his face well enough to make out whether it was Ash, but his pokeball pendant glinted in the moonlight. He stood directly under the window and held out his arms as if he would catch me.

I looked guiltily around my dark room. I'd never snuck out of my bedroom before. I didn't particularly want to be disobedient. I loved my dad. I wanted to get along with him. Being a wayward teen seemed like a lot more trouble than it was worth.

I looked back at Ash. He tapped his foot.

Decision made. I stuffed some pillows into my bed and pulled the covers over them. If this was supposed to be me, I had gained a lot of weight and I was not carrying it well, because I was looking awfully rectangular. However, Drew was out with May and Dad was downstairs with Joy. I seriously doubted anyone would come up to check on me and discover that I had turned into polyfill.

I lowered the window until the opening was barely wide enough for me to squeeze my butt through. Then I eased out, feet first, realizing as my toes scraped the shingles that I should have worn shoes, and realizing as my thighs scraped the shingles that jeans would not have been a bad idea either. I crawled backward down the short section of the roof and hung my legs over the eaves. This was my last chance to go back. I looked up at the dark glass.

"Drop," Ash whispered from below. "I've got you."

I took one last deep breath. I had to psych myself up to take risks. I was not like Ash. I counted in my head, one, two, three...and could not quite bring myself to let go. I started over. One, two, I wanted to see Ash didn't I? three.

"Oof!" Ash caught me all right, with the side of his head. I could tell by the feel of his skull on my foot as I kicked him. He grabbed me as best he could anyway, and we half landed, but half fell in pine needles.

He lay facedown on the ground. I flopped him over on his back to make sure he was alive. If he had a concussion, we'd have to call the ambulance, which meant we'd get caught and he'd get sent to military school. On the bright side, maybe the military school would not take him if he had brain damage. "I'm so sorry."

"Worth it," he grunted. He rolled onto his feet like a ninja and grabbed my hand. "Hurry, before they release the hounds."

We ran through the dark yard, chased by imaginary barking noises. We didn't have far to go. He stopped in the woods halfway between my house and his and made an "after you" gesture at the ladder of his tree house.

"Are you sure?" I asked. "A family of foxes lived in it last year."

"Don't worry. I've cleaned it out a little since then."

I climbed the ladder and peeked up into the tree house. His old sleeping bag covered the plywood floor. Pillows cushioned the plywood walls.

"Ohhh, this is so cool." He'd gone out of his way to plan this. I climbed the rest of the way up and slid across the soft padding to make room for him. He sat beside me. The tree house was smaller than I remembered. It had seemed like a kingdom floating above the forest when we were kids. Now we could stretch out, but just barely.

He leaned behind me and flicked the lighter. A candle sputtered to life. The soft light kissed his intense face.

"We're going to catch the tree house on fire," I warned him. "And the forest, your house, the marina, the whole neighborhood. My dad will be so pissed."

"It's in a container." He showed me the candle in a jar. "And it's on a metal pie plate. Check me out. I think ahead."

"You do!" I really was impressed, because padded tree houses and candles in jars were not like Ash at all.

I sat back against the pillows and watched him. He put his hands behind his head and relaxed against the pillows too. We sat a little apart from each other, but our legs made an angle and our feet met in the middle. I stroked his broad, tanned foot with my pink toe. He didn't shy away, but he didn't make a move on me either.

He took a deep breath and let out a low sigh. "It's been a long time since I've sat outside at night," he said. "Well, it _seems _like a long time. I guess it was only three weeks ago, on your birthday, in my Secret Make-Out Hideout."

"That fateful night," I said ruefully.

"I forgot how loud it is out here," he said.

We listened for a long time, and I stroked his foot with my toe.

"And how many layers," I finally said. "A low hum on the bottom, then a medium, then a high hum. That's the background. Then there's the croaking, like a chanting, and every few seconds a chirp." I moved my toe to the underside of his foot, where he was ticklish.

Now he jerked away, but he still didn't take the hint and scoot in my direction..

I reached over and slid my hand underneath his shirt.

The hard muscles on his stomach jumped at my touch. I almost laughed - not because it was funny, but because I was so overwhelmed with surprise that I could make his body react like that.

"If you could draw this sound," I said, "it would look like the surface of a lake when you dribble water into it. A circle around a drop." I put my fingers together on his skin, then expanded them outward, trailing my fingertips. "Another circle." I moved my fingers and expanded them out. "And lines between them, as you move the water drops from one place to another on the surface." I dragged my finger up his stomach to his chest.

He gasped.

I did laugh out loud this time. "Sorry."

He put his hand on top of my hand, with only his T-shirt between them. "Don't be sorry." Then he slid his hand across his chest, onto _my_ shirt, and ventured underneath. He did this very cautiously, probably waiting for me to hit him. I did not.

"I hear what you mean about the circles." He drew expanding circles with his fingertips in different places on my tummy, just as I'd done with him. "And the lines. But to me, it wouldn't look like the surface of the lake. It would look like fireworks." He dragged one finger from my waistband of my shorts upward, dipping into my belly button and out again. A bottle rocket shooting off.

My whole body was going up in flames as I watched him in the candlelight. Any second he would lean forward to kiss me, and it would be a great one.

Instead he asked, "Do you remember this?" Sitting up again, he reached behind a pillow and pulled out a weathered sign that had hung over the ladders years ago. The letters we'd scratched with a pocketknife were still visible.

"Oh my Gosh." I laughed. _"KEEP OUT JERKS. _You remember that day?"

"Of course I remember," he said. "Gary told us that we couldn't play, and Green and Paul sided with him-"

"And they ganged up on us," I mused.

"-and usually we did what they said and hung around them like abused dogs. This time we said to hell with them and came here. We made this sign and nailed it to the tree."

"And then we waited for them to notice we were gone and come looking for us," I said. "They would see that _we _were the cool ones and _they _were the ones excluded, and they would rue the day, I tell you!" I thought for a moment. "And we ate Double Stuff Oreos out of the bag and talked, and finally went home. They never did miss us and I doubt they rued the day, but it was a nice afternoon." I thought again. "Do you have Double Stuffed Oreos?"

He gave me a reproving look. I wished I hadn't said this, because now it seemed like I didn't appreciate everything else he'd brought.

I started, "I'm just jok-"

He reached behind a pillow and dragged out a package of Double Stuffed Oreos.

Joy had never bought Double Stuffed Oreos for Drew and me. One stuff was enough, she said. All we got was single-stuff whole-wheat faux Oreos from the organic grocery store. I would not swear to it, but I'd bet the stuff was made of tofu. Mrs. Ketchum, in contrast, did not go to such pains for her family, or perhaps she was just tired. This would have made her home a very attractive place for me to hang out even if there had been no boys. With boys _and_ Oreos, it was heaven.

I lifted the chocolate lid and dug into the icing. "Mmmmm," I said. It was even better than I remembered. Mmmm, I put the rest of it in my mouth and shamefully, I might have forgotten Ash was sitting there until I looked up and noticed he was watching me. "Wha?" I asked around cookie.

"You look like you are really enjoying that Oreo."

Embarrassed, I swallowed. "I beg your pardon. I have been living on an athletic training diet of microwave pizza and Joy's muscadine chutney from five years ago."

"Is chutney supposed to age? Yikes." He munched his own cookie and scooted the bag closer to me. "Have another."

I dug into the bag and munched on a second cookie, happily looking around our dark, cozy nest in the flickering candlelight. "The trees seems smaller," I said. "You seem bigger."

"Flattery will get you everywhere."

"But the Double Stuff Oreos taste exactly the same." My voice cracked from a crumb caught in my throat. I might need to bail out of the tree house and drink from the lake.

"I'm sure they have very good quality control." Then the boy who Never Planned Ahead dug under yet another pillow to produce to bottles of water. He always brought two, I'd noticed. Either he was afraid of my cooties, or he knew I was afraid of _his _cooties, ever since the time years ago when Gary spit in my coke.

"Thank you so much," I croaked. As I sipped the cold water, I eyed him. He looked relaxed and innocent, which was not like him at all. "So, what's the occasion?"

"What do you mean?" he asked too quickly. "I wanted to see you. I've been dying to see you."

"Right, but normally you would just spontaneously drag me into the woods. If you've engineered all this, something's up."

He blinked innocently at me for a few more seconds, then gave in. "Okay. It's about the plan."

"Your plan for us to run away together? Let me guess. You've decided we can stay in the tree house and live on Double Stuff Oreos instead." I slid my hand onto his though. "That's actually not a bad idea."

He looked at my hand. "No, it's about _your _plan to change your dad's mind about me." He picked up my hand. "I have something important I want to ask you." He kissed my hand. "You know, when you were out with Kenny and Paul, I got angry."

"You brought me here and wined and dined me" - I nodded toward the Oreos - "just to tell me this? Your temper is not news."

He put our hands under his chin and locked eyes with me. "Gary's next, isn't he?"

He seemed so earnest, I didn't want to leave his question hanging in the air. I want to reassure him. But I didn't want to lie to him either. He would have seen through it, anyway. He already did. Gary was my last resort, if only I could figure out how to use him.

"Don't go out with Gary," Ash said. "Stop the plan. Just give your dad some time to cool down, like my parents wanted. Maybe we won't have the rest of the summer together. But in the fall, I'll do my best on the football team. Everybody loves football players, right?"

I took my hand back. "College football players have been involved in a rash of shootings."

"We'll worry about that later. This is high school, and I can be the hometown darling if coach lets me start as the quarterback."

"What are the chances of that?" I asked. "I mean, I have every confidence in you, but you have to get past that rising senior with a sixty percent completion rate in last year's postseason."

He just looked at me. Most boys seem taken aback when I spout sports statistics, as if girls aren't allowed to keep up with that sort of thing. Not Ash. He was used to me. He was staring at me because he was honestly trying to convince me his own plan would work.

"I have every confidence in you," I repeated.

He huffed out a breath through his nose like he didn't believe me. "Plus, I swear I will not get put on academic probation this year. I will make the minimum GPA for eligibility. I might even stay a tenth of a point or two ahead."

"A 2.2?" I asked. "Gosh, Ash, don't put yourself out."

"I'm serious, Dawn. I will be a model citizen all semester long, and by Christmas surely your dad will let us be together, if you'll just forget about your plan. And Gary."

"And we wouldn't see each other all that time?" I contemplated a whole summer and fall without him. We were supposed to spend the Fourth of July together. He would start as quarterback in the fall, like he said, and I was supposed to go with him to parties after games. And what about the homecoming dance?

He shook his head. "We would sacrifice the short-term for the long-term goal. We would be obedient."

"Like dogs." I hadn't forgotten about his _woof _at my dad.

"Something like that."

"I think my plan would be better. A lot faster."

"I'm not playing." He took my hand again. "Tell me you'll wait for me. Please."

I probably would have tried to talk him out of it if I'd thought he was jealous of Gary. I mean, honestly, higher than a rock-bottom C average? Ash? That would require him to make a B in something. But there was more to it than that. He lifted his chin when he talked about my dad being proud of him and our whole town worshipping the ground he walked on. He didn't just want to get out of this awful sitch we were in. He wanted to earn his way out.

I swallowed and said, "Okay."

"Okay?" He hunched down so his face was even with mind and looked straight into my eyes. "Really?"

"Really." My stomach hurt when I said it.

He sighed. His whole body went limp with relief on the sleeping bag. "Thank you. You won't be sorry. Now, there's one more thing."

"Oreos are poisonous? Then I'm screwed." I laughed. "Hey, then it really would be like _Romeo and Juliet,_ if we both ate poisonous cookies and died here in your tree house together."

He stared blankly at me.

"Ash. _Everybody _has to read _Romeo and Juliet._ Did you flunk ninth grade English?"

"I made a D-minus. No, that's not what I was going to say. I was going to say, I was so happy that night we made out, and I've been kicking myself since then that we fell asleep. Now we won't get any more time together until Christmas, maybe not then, maybe..."

Not ever. I was afraid that's what he was thinking. I didn't say it.

His chest rose and fell with a deep breath. "Before we say good-bye, I want a do-over of that night. Just this one last night with you."

He leaned over me. My body sparked again, like a match held to fuel that burst into flame all over. He pressed down on me. I leaned up to meet him. Our mouths met for that doozy of a kiss I'd been waiting for.

For a few minutes we enjoyed what we'd been missing. He drew back, trailing short kisses across my cheek, into my hairline. He whispered in my ear, "I love you, Dawn."

I reached down and found his warm hand, calloused from wakeboarding and yard work and bottle-rocket burns. I rubbed my thumb in his palm and turned my head so I could looked into his brown eyes, which seemed to glow in the candlelight and the dark. "I love you, too."

He winced. He blinked. This was about to go very bad, because Ash was going to cry. "I miss you," he said, and his voice broke.

"I'm not gone yet." I could hardly bear the thought of being without him until Christmas or after, but seeing him cry would be even worse. So I pushed him into the softness of the sleeping bag and tried to make him forget.

**...**

"Still alive?" I asked him in an hour and a half later.

He chuckled. By now we'd been in the tree house so long that I'd become nocturnal, like the foxes who used to hang out here. The candle had burned low, but I could still see every curve of his face as he lay beside me, watching me. The worry lines between his brows were gone.

I touched the space where the lines had been, then took my hand away. "I'd better go. I wouldn't want to miss my curfew."

"You make no sense whatsoever," he said, but he must have agreed with me, because he sat up and ran his hands back through his hair.

"It's the principle of the thing. I'm coming home before curfew, as I discussed with my dad. He simply does not know who I was with. Or that I was out at all. Details." I waved them away.

He caught my hand and shook it, the deceptively basic first move in the secret handshake we'd started when we were in first grade. "One last time?"

We shook hands upside down, with a twist, high five, low five, pinky swear, elbows touching.

"And add this." He traced the tips of his thumb and finger across my lips, zipping them. "Keep your mouth shut, and I promise to keep mine shut. With football stardom and my GPA in the bag, we'll be dating again before you know it."

"Sounds like a plan." I rolled over to the ladder and climbed down, reluctantly watching our cozy nest disappear above my head. Ash didn't bother with the ladder. He jumped down beside me and took my hand. We walked through the dark forest like nothing was wrong. And nothing was. We would stay apart. My dad would come to his senses. We would get back together. But this future was predicated on Ash starting as quarterback, keeping up his grades, and generally making good. As Drew had said on the sad morning after my birthday, _Sometimes what Ash intends to do and what he actually does are two different things. _

"I worry," I admitted.

"Why do you worry?" Ash's voice came from above me. He'd been taller than me since fourth grade or so, and I'd never gotten used to it.

"You like a challenge," I said.

"Yes."

"You like danger."

"Sorry."

We reached the edge of my yard as close as I dared to come to my house without fear of being overheard. I turned to him and said softly, "I worry that you'll lost interest in me now that I'm not a dangerous challenge."

He stroked the back of my hands with his thumb. "You are the one way I'm normal. When I'm with you, I don't feel like there's anything wrong with me."

"There's _not _anything wrong with you. You're high-spirited."

"I sound like a horse.'

"You _are_ like a horse." He was exactly like a colt incessantly dashing around the paddock and leaping away from the fence for no apparent reason.

"Like a stallion?" He pressed his lips together, trying not to laugh. He was so adorable.

"That's a good note to say good-bye on," I said. "I will remember you just like this, feeling your oats-"

"Ha!"

"- and whinnying about yourself."

"Good." Gently he kissed my forehead. Then he squeezed my hand and let me go.

With a deep sigh of regret, I walked toward my house alone, looking up at my bedroom window. After about ten feet I stopped, turned around, and walked back to where Ash still stood. "How do I get back inside?"

He closed his eyes. Probably he was counting to ten, which was very mature of him - and I would have been proud of his self-control, except that it meant I had screwed up.

He opened his eyes. "You are mind," he said slowly, "and I swear you're secretly a blonde and I love you, but damn. You get back inside by using your key."

"What key?"

"The house key you put in your pocket before you jumped out your window."

I glanced behind me at my house, which suddenly loomed like a haunted mansion, monsters lurking inside. "I need to work on this disobedience thing, because I am not good at it." I could still joke with Ash, but my heart raced. "What do I do? Can you pick the lock?"

"I can't pick the dead bolt. Use the spare key hidden under a fake rock in the flower bed." Though his words were reasonable, I could hear the same rising panic in them that I felt.

"We don't have a fake rock," I said tightly. "My dad works with criminals and thinks he has a bead on them. Burglars know all about the fake rock. Besides, he's sitting with Joy in the living room. No matter what, he'll hear me when I unlock the door."

"Wait out here with me until Green comes home and sneak in with him," Ash said.

Now _that _was a good idea. Drew would protest, but he wouldn't really rat me out when it meant such dire consequences for Ash. I was so relieved! I grabbed Ash in a bear hug.

The door swung wide open at the same time all the outside lights flickered on, blinding us.

I jumped away from Ash.

"DAWN HIKARI BERLITZ!" my dad roared.

"The hounds caught us after all," Ash said calmly.

"Ash!" I whispered. "Run!"

"No," he said in a normal voice, even though we could hear my dad stomping toward us through the pine needles and the blinding light. "I'm not hiding from him. I won't let you take the fall for this."

"There won't be a fall. If he doesn't see you, he'll have no idea I was with you. I'll tell him I wanted to go for a walk by myself on a beautiful summer night."

"Out your window? Anyway, he's seen me already."

"Well, he has _now._" I raised my voice to a normal tone, too, now that we were busted yet again.

Dad's silhouette loomed in front of us. Joy's was farther back, allowing her man to take care of family business. I felt a stab of anger at her for refusing to help Ash and me in the first place.

But it was pointless now. My dad hardly glanced at me. Focusing on Ash, he waved in the direction of the Ketchums' house. He didn't prod Ash with a shotgun, but that was the overall effect.

I could tell from the looks on both their faces that Ash was going to military school.

* * *

**Author's Notes: And once again they are caught! ;) I hope you all enjoyed this chapter, I loved writing it! :D Had some little pearlshipping moments included [': **

**Okay, I'll try not to take months for the next update! Especially since I know how I want the next chapter to go ;) So, hopefully I can actually have that finished in a couple of weeks. No promises though. :b**

**I will see you guys soon. :]**

**- Angel _o/**


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